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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25743037">to see you eat in the middle of the night</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/summercarntspel/pseuds/kaspbrak-tozier89'>kaspbrak-tozier89 (summercarntspel)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, And when I say slow burn I mean it, Domestic Fluff, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Good Parents Maggie &amp; Wentworth Tozier, M/M, Music, Pining, Post-Derry 2, Richie Tozier &amp; Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is Bad at Feelings, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Roommates, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak, but you didn't hear that from me shh, food as a love language, it's about the pining, midnight snacks, sharing food</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:48:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>41,772</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25743037</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/summercarntspel/pseuds/kaspbrak-tozier89</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The point is, this late-night snack adventure is a pretty regular thing for Richie, so when he crashes into another body in his kitchen at ass o’clock in the morning and whacks the living fuck out of his ankle when his bare foot makes rough contact with the kitchen island, he feels like he’s well within his rights to let out a shout.</p><p> </p><p>or: Richie and Eddie's love language is midnight snacks.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>219</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. it's a wonderful surprise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title (and chapter titles) taken from: "Friday, I'm in Love" by The Cure</p><p>THE LARGEST OF THANK YOUs TO: Leanna (@leannerd), Claire (@planetcleer), and Luke for their love, support, ideas, eye strain, and general hyping up that pushed me to work on this beast and actually get it done. I owe it all to you, losers. &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s a probably not a surprise to anyone that Richie’s a little bit of an insomniac. He always has been, ever since he was a kid, since well before the family doctor started prescribing him Ritalin so his folks and teachers got a break from that pesky problem he had with focusing and sitting still. He’s got memories, vague and cloudy ones, like most memories are from before he was, like, 10, of being a little kid and snuggling himself under the comforter on his bed with a stack of comic books and a little flashlight, reading and re-reading about Spiderman until he heard the birds singing outside his window. He used to drive his mother nuts with his little midnight snack excursions, leaving her to wonder why the hell the box of Little Debbie’s she bought for him and his sister to take in their lunchboxes was half-empty when she <em>just bought the</em> <em>damn thing yesterday! Richie, if you keep doing that you’re going to make yourself sick, sweetie. </em>That didn’t stop him, barely deterred him at all, and he’d never broken the habit of sneaking to the kitchen after-hours to scrounge around for something to fill the black hole in his gut that tried to demand he address his feelings in the quiet of the night. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Half a bag of Rold Gold pretzel sticks and a chipped, stained coffee mug full of apple juice was a lot more appealing than thinking about how he felt<em>—barfaroony—</em>and the snack softened the black hole’s growling enough for him to catch a few winks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Besides that, when the nightmares really started hitting him after that particularly hellish summer, the one he was convinced he and his friends weren’t gonna live through, it was hard to want to sleep, anyway. To this day, he sleeps better with a full stomach and when he’s on the verge of collapsing. That isn’t healthy, and he knows it isn’t healthy, but it’s hardly the worst of his habits—see: swallowing down his SSRI with a swig of soda or, on harder days, vodka.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In his twenties, he’d fumble his way through the dark in his first apartment in LA, a tiny place labeled as an <em> efficiency </em> because it was too small to even be considered a studio, and open the noisy refrigerator so he could dunk his hand into a bag of shredded cheese and shovel it into his mouth, washing it down with a big gulp of RC Cola or whatever other shit he managed to buy at the 7-11 down the road that week. He did the same thing long after that apartment, and the next one, and the one after that, and he still did it now, in his tucked-away house with enough trees around its perimeter to ward off wandering eyes so that he could skinny dip in the pool, if the desire struck him, and, like, <em> exist </em>away from the flashbulbs of the paparazzi that made his eyes go funnier than they already were.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The point is, this late-night snack adventure is a pretty regular thing for Richie, so when he crashes into another body in his kitchen at ass o’clock in the morning and whacks the living fuck out of his ankle when his bare foot makes rough contact with the kitchen island, he feels like he’s well within his rights to let out a shout.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Jesus fuckin’ <em>Christ!</em>  What the <em> fuck!</em>”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Oh my God!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie bends forward to brace his hands on the offending piece of furniture—he didn’t want the stupid island when he first moved in, knew shit like this would happen, didn’t give a fuck that it offered extra storage or looked nice or whatever—and glares at the other offending party, a 5’9” little bastard with a plastic Mickey Mouse bowl filled to the brim with Lucky Charms in one hand and a carton of vanilla oat milk in the other.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What are you doing? Do you know what time it is, fucker?” Richie asks, rubbing the big toe of his left foot over the throbbing ankle bone on his right, wondering if there’ll be a bruise there tomorrow, sure that he will be forced, against his will, to make a CVS run for some anti-bruise cream bullshit if one appears.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Could ask you the same thing,” Eddie snorts, holding his bowl of cereal and milk possessively to his chest, like Richie might swipe the sugary goodness and gross ass milk in retaliation for scaring the piss out of him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It’s my house!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>“Our </em> house for now, shitstick. I gave you money for last month’s mortgage payment <em> and </em>this month’s.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Right. Yeah. Eddie lives with him now, so, Richie supposes, he can raid the fridge at ungodly hours, too, if he wants.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s only been about two weeks, so Richie still has moments of being shocked to see Eddie sprawled across the couch in the living room, to find him sitting at the table in the mornings when Richie drags his old ass out of bed before noon, to hear his too-loud bitching about statistics or gross averages or whatever the fuck from the office where he works from home a couple days a week while he’s deciding if he wants to move to the LA branch of his current company or forget about his job—that Richie still insists was invented before fun—in favor of doing something he actually likes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After Derry, when shit stopped hitting the fan for everyone else, it just kept smacking into the blades for Eddie. While Bev and Ben got to make goo-goo eyes at each other on Ben’s boat and Stan and Patty started seriously looking into adopting a kid and Bill took a break from being on set for his movie to travel the country—see: <em>shack up—</em>with Mike, insisting it was good for his writer brain even though they all knew better, his wife—well, ex-wife, technically, even though that wasn’t public news just yet; it’ll be a big ass story when it hits, especially since they’re still working together, but from what Bill has told them, Audra is actually happy for him and they’re better as friends and coworkers than spouses—included, and Richie lost the numbers of his ghostwriters in favor of working on his own material for the first time in, like, almost a decade, Eddie was still dealing with way too much bullshit at home. After almost two full months of Myra bitching and screaming and bawling her eyes out every time she caught Eddie scrolling through the club group chat, Eddie moved all his shit to a little apartment he managed to sublet without giving up any vital organs as collateral, and the divorce proceedings started. When the guy Eddie was renting from let him know he was coming back home from his trip abroad, a couple months after Eddie moved in, Eddie packed up again and wound up across the country two days after his divorce was finalized. He was only planning to live with Richie until he decided what he wanted to do with his life, decided where he wanted to live and who he wanted to <em>be,</em> and that was still the plan, but with every shared dinner and insistence on helping pay the mortgage and utilities and Eddie buying his own pool float, an oversized turtle he found for cheap at Costco, Richie is doubting he’ll be leaving anytime soon.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not that Eddie sticking around bothers him. No siree, he's more than happy to have a long-term sleepover with his best buddy, and no, fuck off, there are no ulterior motives, not at all. If seeing Eddie sleep-rumpled and guzzling down coffee, or replacing burnt out light bulbs Richie hadn't cared to switch for new ones, or yelling at a competitive poker broadcast on the TV satisfied so many of Richie's Eddie-themed fantasies—the PG ones, anyway—well, that was just recompense for a life so loaded with bullshit he needed a shovel to walk between rooms in his house.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie plonks his cereal bowl and milk down on the island and turns to grab a spoon from the cutlery drawer. Richie watches him with tired eyes, and he's thankful he’d put his glasses back on after having tossed them off so he could comfortably smush his face into his pillows while he stared at videos on his phone. Eddie, too, looks sleepy as he pours his prissy milk over the sugary cereal, something Richie half-expects to create enough of a paradox to rip a hole in the dimension right in the kitchen. His usually tidy hair is a mess and it curls up a little around his ears, a sure sign that he hadn’t gotten his monthly trim before he left New York. He's got on a gray shirt proclaiming his participation in some 5K a couple years prior and a pair of old, pilly running shorts, threadbare and green, that sit loose on his hips, the elastic in the drawstring having just about packed it in.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie could stare at him all day, all night, and he feels that black hole in his stomach grow bigger, threatening to swallow him whole.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“S’your foo’ ah’kay?” Eddie asks around a big mouthful of Lucky Charms, his cheeks puffed out as he hamsters the sweet cereal in them, and Richie is reminded of Eddie at a much younger age looking the same, chipmunk-cheeked after taking too big a bite of something, too afraid to swallow it all at once, lest he choke to death on cinnamon apple oatmeal, a travesty of the highest caliber. Eddie swallows this bite down with a thick-sounding gulp, and Richie feels his face scrunch up at the sound of it. Sure, he’s the king of making disgusting mouth noises to piss off everyone in his vicinity, but he doesn’t like to be on the receiving end; it skeeves him out a little. “Sounded like it hurt.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie lets out a yawn, wishing he felt half as tired as the jaw-cracking monstrosity makes him seem, and bobs his head as he scrubs his hands over his stubble, rubs at his eyes under his glasses. He turns to the fridge and sticks his head inside, scanning over the shelves, one hand absently settled on his belly, trying to include it in the decision-making process. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Contrary to popular belief, Richie isn’t a bad cook and had a decently-stocked pantry and refrigerator long before Eddie showed up. While his stage persona would lead a lot of people to believe otherwise, he’s a grown-up and he <em> does </em> know how to eat his veggies once in a while and not just because he went down a rabbit hole of articles on <em> bachelor scurvy </em> that freaked him out of his gourd. He still keeps a stash of Nutty Bars and Cookie Crisp and packets of fruit snacks shaped like Super Mario characters because of course he does, but he also has, like, <em>radishes</em>, and a snap-seal bag of mini sweet peppers he likes to dip in ranch dressing when he gets peckish before dinner.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He hums as his eyes land on the drawer they—<em>th</em><em>ey,</em> Eddie <em> lives here </em> now, and that’s weird and nice but mostly <em> weird </em>at this hour of the night or morning or whatever—keep lunch meat and cheese in, and he grabs a half-gone block of extra sharp cheddar cheese, hip-checking the refrigerator door closed as he reaches for the cheese slicer that looks like a guillotine, an excellent TJ Maxx find from at least a decade earlier.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What’re you doin' up?” Richie asks around another yawn as he slices the hunk of cheese into four even rectangles, then lines those up to slice in half down their middles. He scoops the cubes into one hand and throws the plastic bag the cheese lived in away with the other, then tosses two of the pieces into his mouth and blinks at Eddie as he chews.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie leans his weight into the island as he scoops bite after bite of cereal into his mouth, slurping up spoonfuls of milk as he goes, and if Richie didn’t find him so unbelievably adorable, he’d kick him for making more fucking <em> mouth noises</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Couldn’t sleep,” Eddie shrugs, noncommittal in a way that means he either doesn’t think it’s worth talking about or maybe thinks it’s worth it but isn’t interested at the moment. “You?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The kitchen lights are off, apart from the dim light above the stove they keep on pretty much all the time, but Richie can still make out Eddie’s features almost perfectly—he’d say it was because his eyes were adjusted to the dark, but, really, it’s because he spends a lot of his daylight hours staring at Eddie with moony eyes—and that stupid black hole whooshes as it tugs on his heart. Eddie looks sleepy, but not quite tired, and he’s more relaxed than he is during the day, his shoulders a little slumped, stubble that Richie begins noticing around dinnertime a little scruffier than Richie typically sees it, since Eddie has a very particular shaving routine after his morning jogs around the neighborhood and Richie is never up early enough to see him off, probably never will be.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He looks, Richie decides, shoving three more little cheese cubes in his mouth, like he belongs there, right in the kitchen, with his snack and his pajamas on and his expression of quiet, almost calculated affection that makes Richie’s big, dumb heart want to macarena through his thoracic cavity.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie wonders why he can’t suffer from these completely bullshit, mushy thoughts during the day, when they’re easier to ignore and push away, but then he remembers that, <em> oops,</em> yeah, he feels them just as strongly when the sun is out, so there’s him fucked.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’m never asleep before three,” Richie says. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He fishes down a mug from the cabinet, an ugly, lumpy green thing that Eddie proclaimed his hatred for the first time he saw it—it’s got tacky white bubble letters spelling out “Dumb Bitch Juice” on both sides of the handle and an uneven heart etched into the bottom, and Eddie despises it—and fills it with water from the refrigerator dispenser. He found the mug at a yard sale in Huntington Beach a few months before Mike called them all home, offered the woman ten bucks for it, and his enthusiasm over the art project the woman’s daughter made in some college pottery class landed him a free mug, along with a stack of worn paperback sci-fi novels that no one else had looked at all afternoon at the sale. He remembers now that he and Eddie read most of those books together as kids, Eddie starting out beside him on the hammock before he bitched that he couldn’t read from that angle without crossing his eyes a little and squinting and <em> what if they get stuck like ‘at, Richie, then what?, </em>eventually settling himself with his back against Richie’s chest, Richie’s arms draped over his shoulders so he could hold the book in front of both of them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That set up was the cause of one of Richie’s very first inappropriate boners, and he thinks of it fondly. If Eddie would have noticed, though, he would have absolutely committed sepuku then and there, so it was a good thing Eddie had a big hard-on for Jules Verne at the time and was way too focused on whatever the fuck Lidenbrock was doing in<em> Journey to the Center of the Earth </em> to pay any attention to Richie, apart from smacking his arm when he wanted the page turned. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Me neither.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Huh?” Richie asks dumbly, squinting as he’s yanked from his thoughts.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’m never asleep before, like, three-ish either,” Eddie explains before he sets his spoon down and grabs his bowl in both hands, tipping it to drink the sweet milk from the bottom of it, and Richie kind of wants to cry, though whether from the lips-smacking noises or from how much his heart aches to just <em> touch </em> Eddie, he doesn't know. While he ponders that, Eddie brings his bowl and spoon to the sink, makes quick work of scrubbing them up, elbowing Richie out of his way when he dries them and tucks them into the little dish rack on the counter.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You get up so early, though,” Richie says, taking a sip of his water as he polishes off the last of his cheese, “Like, really early.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“First of all, seven-thirty is not <em> really early,</em> you overgrown toddler,” Eddie admonishes, shooting any heat behind his words right in the foot with the way he smiles, “Second, I nap every day, man. What do you think I <em> do </em> when I go to my room for, like, two hours after work every day?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie hums, thumbing his chin like he really has to think, and arches his eyebrow. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Furiously jack off? Play the game where you see how weird you can make your porn searches before you can't get it up anymore? That's what I'd do after analyzing risks all day.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You’re a shithead,” Eddie says simply, like it’s a basic, well-known fact of life, and maybe it is. He smiles as he says it, though, a wry little grin, and Richie counts that as a point for Tozier. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie tips his head towards the staircase. “You going back up to lie down?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie looks to the clock on the stove. It reads 2:13, but he never moved it up an hour when he was supposed to spring forward, so it’s really a little after 3. Eddie hates that the clock is wrong, but he refuses to do anything about it, other than complain at least twice a day.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Probably, yeah,” Richie nods, setting his mug in the sink to be dealt with when he wakes up again, “You, too?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They move to the stairs together, and the steps are wide enough for both of them to go up at once, but Richie hangs back and gestures for Eddie to go first so they don’t, like, bump elbows or accidentally touch hands, because Richie already feels like he could cry and he doesn’t need to explain that tonight, no thanks. Eddie sticks by him when they reach the landing, then he jerks his chin towards his bedroom door, the space that used to be a guest room closer to the stairs than Richie’s bedroom at the far end of the hall.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“‘Night, Rich,” Eddie says around a yawn, running his fingers through his hair.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Wait, wait,” Richie says all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know what he thinks he’s going to say, but Eddie just looks at him expectantly, so he does what he does best: says the first thing that comes into his mind without filtering it for bullshit. “If you’re always up, why don't you ever answer my fun, late-night group chat texts?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie rolls his eyes, and Richie can see it even in the dim light of the hallways, only illuminated by the teeny light coming off of the kitchy-looking scent plug-in thing in the outlet by the top of the stairs, Eddie’s first purchase for the house when he moved in and deemed that <em> it smells like a dude lives here, man </em>. Those little plug-in things are finding homes in a lot of the outlets around Richie’s house, smelling of soft laundry or fresh-cut grass or whatever other bullshit aromas their little plastic packages advertise, and Richie will wrinkle his nose up when a strong waft hits him, but he knows that Eddie knows he really kind of likes them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I <em> do</em>, jackass,” Eddie reminds him, and Richie does kind of remember Eddie responding to some of his Tozier After Dark memes about existential dread and pictures of dogs wearing sunglasses. “The only times I don't is when I don't want to encourage your shitty sense of humor.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>Yeouch</em>, you really know how to hit a guy where it hurts,” Richie moans, slapping a hand over his chest and swooning himself against the wall, which only manages to rattle a picture of his sister’s kids he has hanging there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Yeah, right in the paycheck,” Eddie snorts. He opens his bedroom door, then repeats, “Goodnight, Rich.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie smiles, and it could be his eyes tricking him, but he thinks Eddie smiles back.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“‘Night, Skeds.”</p>
<p><br/>He hurries off to his room before Eddie can yell at him for calling him a dumb nickname, even though he knows dumb nicknames are one of Richie’s passions, and he finds that he’s falling asleep a couple minutes later, glasses tossed away as he’s absently watching a BA Test Kitchen video on YouTube about sourdough starters, when he gets a text from Eddie. He opens the message, and it’s a picture of Sleeping Beauty with bags under her eyes, along with a text that reads <em> this is u when u wake up before noon </em>, and he drifts off clutching his phone, a smile on his face.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. throw out your frown</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It happens again two nights later. Really, it probably would have happened the next night, too, if Richie wasn't too chickenshit to leave his bedroom after he and Eddie said goodnight around eleven-thirty.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The night after that, though, after Richie exhausts the emergency stash of snacks in his nightstand, which consists of two Werther's Originals that remind him of the lectures his dad used to give him about crunching through hard candy the second he got it in his mouth and a packet of peanut butter crackers that he eats half of before he decides they taste like shit and, surprise, the plastic packaging says they expired in 2014, he ventures out of his room and down to the kitchen. His phone screen flashes that it's ten 'til three, and his wallpaper, Eddie flipping him off and looking like a drowned rat after Richie tossed him off his turtle raft right when Eddie was starting to doze in the afternoon sun, greets him, reminding him that he should really learn to be more subtle, but it's damn difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he gets to the kitchen, one of the overhead lights is on, and there's a bag of Act II popcorn spinning around in the microwave. Eddie is there, too, leaning against a counter with his ankles crossed, scowling at his phone in a pair of flannel pajama pants and another 5K shirt.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I'm makin' popcorn," Eddie says by way of greeting, not bothering to look up from his phone, "wanna share?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie hums an affirmative note and walks to the fridge. He grabs a glass jug of chocolate milk, the good stuff he gets from a friend of a friend of a friend who has a dairy farm up in Petaluma. He waves it at Eddie as he hears the first few pops of kernels in the microwave, and when Eddie finally looks up, he nods—they'd been slowly working on figuring out what, if anything, Eddie is actually allergic to, which is as grossly domestic as it sounds and involves a lot of Richie coaxing and goading, insisting that having real cheese on his pizza won't kill Eddie, promising to jab the fuck out of Eddie’s thigh with his epi-pen if the MSG in cup noodles makes his throat close up, and dairy landed square in the Mostly Okay column of the spread Eddie made for them in Excel, because he's anal retentive and the cutest thing Richie has ever laid eyes on—so Richie grabs two big glasses and starts pouring. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He remembers his midnight snack trip a couple nights after Eddie arrived, the same day Eddie bought the first batch of scent plug-ins, and something quietly clicks into place that he didn't actually know was loose. That night, when he'd come downstairs, he remembers smelling popcorn, but he chalked it up to being hungry and having an overactive imagination. He didn't think anything else of it, but wound up popping his own bag of Butter Lovers and practicing his technique of tossing pieces into the air and catching them in his mouth when he got back to his bed, which resulted in him waking up with bits of popcorn sticking in his hair because, apparently, some landed on his pillow and he didn’t notice.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe while he was making a mess and watching Forensic Files, Eddie was just down the hall, nibbling at his own popcorn in what had to be a much neater fashion.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie can't help but smile.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He hands over one glass of chocolate milk to Eddie, stashing the jug back in the fridge, and arches one eyebrow up in that way his dad always did, the way Richie begged him to explain how to do because it looked all James Bond-y to Richie's eleven-year-old eyes. Somewhere in his hindbrain, he still thinks the expression, one he finally learned to do when he was, like, fifteen, is just a <em> little </em> international super spy-ish. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Who took a dump in your cornflakes, Eds?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Huh?" Eddie asks. He takes a sip of the chocolate milk and smiles like he always does when he remembers he can drink it, dimples popping out and making him look just like the kid Richie couldn't handle leaving alone for three seconds. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You're glaring," Richie says, listening to the whirr of the microwave as the popping of the popcorn slows down to a couple every few seconds. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Stan's beating me at Words with Friends." Eddie is fully pouting as he leans forward to stop the microwave, clicking the door open and letting some of the steam escape before he grabs for the bag and tears into it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Jesus Christ, really?" Richie snickers, shoving a hand into the popcorn, ignoring the way it burns his palm and his tongue as he tosses a few pieces into his mouth, "You old ladies having fun? My mom plays that shit, you know." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Yeah, and she's beating me, too!" Eddie whines, huffing and angry breath out through his nose. He reaches up into one of the cupboards to grab the big red bowl they use for popcorn when they watch movies, and Richie decidedly does <em> not </em> notice the way the muscles in his thighs flex under his flannel pants when he gets on his tip-toes. Eddie dumps the popcorn into the bowl, then throws the empty bag away in the little trash can under the sink.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"She beats everyone," Richie says, rolling his eyes. They reach for popcorn at the same time and their fingers brush together in the bowl, and, exactly like when the same thing happens while they watch movies in the evenings, it snaps him back to being a kid, to sneaking his hand into Eddie's grip far past the age when it was cute. Or allowed. "She and my dad tag-team and she uses one’a those online dictionaries that give you words if you punch in the letters you have."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Oh, so every Tozier cheats at games?" Eddie sneers, taking a sip of his chocolate milk that leaves him with the faintest trace of a milk mustache, and he looks a lot like he did as a kid, when he’d gobble down ice cream cones Richie bought him on hot days in the summer. "Where's your <em> integrity?</em>" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie rolls his eyes so hard he feels the pull of the muscles behind them. "You win <em> one game </em> of Clue and you're labeled a cheater for life!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You didn't win! You fuckin' cheated! Cheating nullifies the win!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I didn't even mean to! I didn't know I had the card you asked for!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You wrote it down on your fucking sheet thing and it was in your fucking <em> hand,</em> Richie, how do you expect me to believe that?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Suddenly Eddie is <em> yelling,</em> and Richie is, too, and it feels almost sacrilegious to be so damn loud so late at night, but it's weirdly freeing, too, as they shovel popcorn into their mouths and wash down the kernels with chocolate milk. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I didn't remember I wrote it down and the cards fuckin’ stick together," Richie insists, like he has at least twelve times since the game happened all of three days ago, "and I was four shots in at that point!" Really, drunkenly playing Clue while sitting at the dining room table and goading each other into <em> one more shot, pussy, do it, no balls </em> wasn’t their brightest idea, but if memory serves, it probably wasn’t their dumbest, either.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"That's no excuse to ruin the game!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I said I was fucking sorry!" Richie defends, throwing a piece of popcorn at Eddie's face for emphasis. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie, because he's nothing if not an annoying asshole who needs to win at everything, manages to catch it in his mouth and chomps it down before he sticks out his tongue at Richie. Richie’s mind flashes with all kinds of ideas for how he could lean forward and get his own tongue into the mix, but now is certainly not the time for thoughts like that. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I want a fucking rematch," Eddie says, snapping Richie out of his Eddie-and-tongues fantasy, which is a blessing, really. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Tomorrow, after Jeopardy," Richie offers, reaching out his hand for a shake to seal the deal. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I want to watch Wheel of Fortune." Eddie complains, looking at Richie's outstretched hand like it's somehow offended him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"<em>Fine</em>, after Wheel of Fortune," Richie amends. He doesn't really know <em> why </em>Eddie wants to watch Wheel of Fortune—he doesn't recall them ever making it through a game without Eddie stomping off, even when they were kids. Richie's got a big mouth and something about the word puzzles really clicks in his brain, and every time he announces the solution, Eddie screams like he's been fucking shot. He's amiable, though; anything to make Eddie shut the fuck up about him not offering up his card with Mrs. Peacock on it. Maybe he'll grab a legal pad and write the answers down, so he can still be right but avoid Eddie's wrath.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie finishes his glass of chocolate milk and bobs his head once, then shakes it. "I'm not touching your hand until you wash the butter off. That's gross."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie rolls his eyes and finishes his own milk, then takes his and Eddie's glasses and sets them in the sink, giving them a quick wash before he upends them in the dish rack. He feels awake and alive, something like adrenaline crackling along his nerves as he watches Eddie, whose cheeks are ruddy from arguing but eyes are bright with that same look he's given Richie since they were kids, that one that told Richie that even when they were fighting about some stupid bullshit, they were friends 'til the end. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie wishes, like he does many, many times every day, that he didn't have to wait twenty-odd years to see those eyes again. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Bet we could beat Stan's ass if we teamed up," Richie says, wanting to keep the conversation going, desperate to keep talking to Eddie even though he's been with him all day, got all day to talk to him tomorrow since it's Sunday and Eddie isn't working.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie is, for someone who just complained about the Toziers and their penchant for cheating—or, as Maggie says of her and Went's Words with Friends strategy, <em> playing to win, Richie, have we taught you nothing?</em>—surprisingly excited about Richie's offer, and they wind up standing in the kitchen, heads bent over Eddie's phone as they finish off the popcorn, Eddie typing Richie's suggestions until they find a word that puts him only two points behind Stan and lands him decent letters afterwards. They both giggle when Stan texts Eddie an annoyed <em> Go to fucking bed, I’m literally up for work and you haven’t slept yet </em> that Eddie replies to with a middle finger emoji.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie dumps the unpopped kernels from the bottom of the bowl—he crunched on those as a kid, too, and got a lecture about dental health so intensive that just looking at the little fuckers makes his jaw ache—and Eddie flicks the light off, then they head for the stairs, same as before, Eddie going on ahead of Richie and waiting for him on the landing. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You know," Eddie says, uncharacteristically quiet after such a rowdy half an hour, "it's a lot nicer to stay up when you've got someone to talk to." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie feels his heart thump, thinks it might be Tex Avery-ing out of his chest what with the way it pounds like it’s fit to burst, and he knows he blushes as he gives Eddie a smile that's almost shy. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Company's good, moo juice is better," Richie quips, and, to his delight, Eddie lets out a wheezy breath that could be a laugh, and that's a point for Tozier.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"G'night, Rich," Eddie says, moving to his door, "Same time tomorrow?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie nods fast, a little worried his glasses will fly off his face, but Eddie either doesn't notice or decides not to comment. "Same bat time, same bat channel. Night, Eds." </p>
<p><br/>They part ways, and if Richie hugs a pillow tight to his chest and shoots Stan a text that says <em> I think I'm in love???? shockd and confusrd </em> , ignoring the <em> You've been in love since you were 13, idiot </em> followed by <em> And tell Eddie to go the fuck to sleep, I’m gonna win anyway </em> he gets back, Eddie doesn't need to know.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. spinning round and round</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hello, this chapter is a long one, but doing it this way made the most sense for breaking it up, whoops!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>The next few nights pass in much the same way, and it kind of becomes a routine.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sunday, a few hours after Eddie kicks his ass at Clue twice in a row and he slinks off to his room, a little wounded by the fact that he apparently <em> can't </em> win without cheating, intentionally or not, Richie meets up with Eddie in the kitchen and they conspire over the best start for Eddie's new game of Words with Friends with Maggie and, by extension, Went. They also eat a plate of blue corn tortilla chips with the leftover queso from their Moe's dinner and crush a whole pitcher of tooth-achingly sweet Cherry Kool-aid Richie mixes up after he finds a packet of it in the back of a cupboard. He dumps in too much sugar and kind of expects Eddie to lecture him about it, but winds up just having to promise to brush his teeth thoroughly before bed so the red dye number 40 doesn’t eat through his enamel. He promises, and they go to bed, and he brushes his teeth for two and a half minutes in his ensuite because he has a feeling Eddie will <em> know </em>if he doesn’t and Eddie is not too proud to tattle to Wentworth that Richie’s slacking on his dental hygiene; he did it several times when they were kids. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The night after, they drift from the kitchen, both clutching paper plates with Super Pretzels and big smears of French’s Classic Yellow, and settle into the couch to watch that day's Jeopardy episode that they missed since Richie had a call with his manager and PR guy after dinner. Eddie sweeps the Doctor's Bag category, which surprises no one, but Richie gets even by pulling out his weird knowledge of Renaissance Art in Double Jeopardy—who knew being able to tell his Botticelli from his Caravaggio would actually pay off?—which impresses Eddie, even if he resolutely won’t say so. They both get the Final Jeopardy question right, some obscure thing about Johnny Depp's character in the original 21 Jumpstreet, and Eddie convinces him, as much as he needs convincing—see: not a lot—to watch Wheel of Fortune, too, before they retire to their rooms at around 4:30.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tuesday, they're back in the kitchen, and Richie makes them an over-easy egg each, one of his midnight snack staples, and Eddie butters toast while Richie sprinkles a pinch of salt and pepper on the yolks. He dunks on Eddie a little for being afraid of eating over-easy eggs as a kid, on high alert for salmonella and whatever else, and reminds Eddie, with a decent impression, of the way he used to pout when Maggie made Richie over-easy eggs for breakfast and made him scrambled instead. Eddie tries to say he wasn't <em>pouting</em>, he was <em>scowling</em>, because Richie liked to take big, messy bites of yolk-soaked toast, mouth stuffed full of mush while he told Eddie how the threat of food-borne illness <em>is where the flavor comes from, Sketti!</em>, but Richie throws him a look and Eddie relents, says maybe he was pouting a <em>little</em>, but <em>I</em> <em>was a pouty kid, so, fuck you, Richie, gimme my goddamn egg.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The thing that doesn't change night to night is that it's the most fun Richie’s had in years. It reminds him of their sleepovers, sharing a bed or couch or putting their sleeping bags too close in the Hanlon barn. To be fair, he always has fun with Eddie, and that's proven by the way he's so eager to be with him all the damn time. It's to the point that he sometimes hangs out in the office while Eddie works, pretending to write as he listens to Eddie mutter to himself about numbers—when Eddie suggested they get a second desk for the office so Richie didn't have to write at the little arm chair, Richie had to excuse himself to his ensuite so he could shed a few tears in private before he and Eddie checked out desks on the IKEA website—but, like, the point stands.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His nightmares have eased up a little, too. And he isn’t nearly dumb or jaded enough to have a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing himself that these things aren’t correlated.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The other thing that doesn't change is that they don't talk about their midnight escapades in the light of day. Richie doesn't know what to make of that, but he isn't willing to take the risk that would come along with mentioning anything, so he keeps his mouth shut. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>* * * *</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Wednesday night brings a bigger change than they've faced thus far. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Richie descends the stairs around 3, hell-bent on getting his grubby mits on, at <em> minimum</em>, two thick slices of the banana bread Eddie whipped up with the browning bananas he was sick of seeing in the fruit bowl, the kitchen lights are off. That hasn't happened since the first run-in they had, which feels a lot longer than a week ago, so Richie enters the kitchen cautiously, if only to spare his ankles. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Eds?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He gets no answer, and when he flicks the lights on, there's no Eddie to be found, no smell of popcorn, no sign that Eddie has been in the kitchen since they said goodnight around midnight. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>First, Richie feels the crushing weight of disappointment settle on his shoulders and sink its claws in. Second, that disappointment fades into worry. Eddie loves a routine—the little weirdo lives by his lists and calendars and by-the-minute internal clock—and Richie doesn't think he'd break a streak for no reason. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He tells himself that Eddie could just be asleep, but Deadlights visions of his best buddy being turned into an Eddie-kabob flash through his mind, and he's barreling up the stairs a second later, stopping outside Eddie's bedroom door. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>His light is on and Richie can faintly hear a slightly distorted voice and the tinny echo of canned laughter. That's a good sign, probably—Pennywise doesn’t seem like a sitcom dude. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie raises a fist, knocks a soft "shave and a haircut" against the wood. "Eddie?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"C'min, it's unlocked," Eddie's voice says back, and Richie swallows down his irrational fear of seeing him strung up or eaten or worse, swings the door open. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>There's Eddie, and he's alive to boot! He's lounging in bed, tucked up under what Richie vaguely recognizes as a weighted blanket he ordered on Amazon, a fuzzy gray monster that looks as cozy as the packaging had promised, and his laptop is next to him, an episode of Full House playing. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Hey," Eddie says with a tight smile, and Richie sees something nervous flicker through those big puppy-dog eyes of his. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You alright?" Richie asks, leaning against the doorframe, "You're, uh… Always downstairs before me." He scratches an itchy spot on his jaw and blinks at Eddie, feeling a confounding mixture of happiness that Eddie is okay and worry that he might <em> not </em>be. Richie doesn’t think too hard about it, though, because he figures the last thing either of them needs is him working himself into a panic attack.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Oh, yeah," Eddie says, a little too fast, shaking his head, "I just… I fell asleep early? And I had a… Nightmare. You know?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Does Richie know? Richie, who was just having a waking, walking nightmare about Eddie being gutted like a fish by a demon clown? He has some idea, yeah. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You okay?" Richie asks, and he knows it sounds <em> tender</em>, knows he should probably rib Eddie a little even just to save them both from the embarrassing notion of being <em> seen</em>, being <em> known</em>, but, maybe for the first time in his forty-odd years on earth, he can't bring himself to be a jerk. "Rough one?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie scrubs a hand over his stubble, and there's another burst of canned laughter from the laptop that prompts Eddie to click it closed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Yeah, yeah, I just, like… Got spooked, I guess?" Eddie huffs a humorless little laugh, dripping with a self-deprecating tone far too familiar to Richie's ears, "I was going to wait until you went down and follow you, but I didn't hear you on the steps. Or hear you walk by." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie leans heavier into the doorframe and crosses his arms over his chest, feeling the scratchy, peeling letters of his old, screen-printed Jack Daniels shirt itch at his forearms. He’s determined not to let Eddie see just how much that means—he trusts Richie, knows Richie can and will do anything to protect him—because that’s just a little too heady to contemplate while Eddie is cuddled up in bed, too scared to go down the stairs of a house he’s quickly making his own.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Oh, you forget, you’re talkin’ to the midnight snack master, young grasshopper,” Richie says, affecting some kind of Voice, though what exactly it is he can’t say, to distance himself from the situation a little, “I’ve been sneaking down the stairs to raid the kitchen for fuckin’ decades. I’m a midnight snack ninja.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie chuckles, and that's good, since his face, previously creased and pinched with nerves, softens a little.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You look cozy," Richie says before he can close his big, dumb mouth, then snaps it shut so hard his teeth dig into the tip of his tongue and he winces. "That blanket doing its thing?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nodding, Eddie shifts a little so he's sitting up a bit more, back resting against the fluffy, hypoallergenic pillows by his headboard.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"S'nice," Eddie says, bobbing his head again, "I was afraid it would be, like, constricting, but it's like a big hug. I'll bring it out to the couch tomorrow and you can try it." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie smiles too wide, all crooked teeth and Muppet-y lips, and nods fast. "I'd like that." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Before Eddie can reply, Richie's tummy gives an almighty growl, loud enough for Eddie to hear, to snort a laugh at. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Hungry?" Eddie asks, like he doesn't already know the answer, and glances to the little, old-fashioned clock he has on his bedside table. It looks a lot like the one Richie had in his room as a kid, and the tiny hammer situated between the two bells on top makes him think of clear, crisp mornings, when he'd leave home ten minutes earlier than he had to so he could collect Eddie and they’d bike to school together. "You're usually stuffing your face about now." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie grins, devilish and shit-eating, and rubs his belly with one hand, putting on a passable Winnie the Pooh Voice, "There's a'rumbly in my tumbly, Eds!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie snickers again, and Richie does his best not to preen. He knows he can always make Eddie laugh, but, in the light of day, Eddie often tries to hold it in, that vein in his forehead becoming visible as he presses his lips into a tight line so as to not giggle when Richie cracks some dumb sex joke that <em> wasn't funny when we were twelve, isn't funny now, dickwad</em>. At night, his defenses are down, and Richie loves taking advantage of that. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Go get something to eat, nerd," Eddie tells him, and Richie is loathed to admit how fast he'd follow any command Eddie gives. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>And, because Richie's head over heels, ass over tea kettle, feelings over logic in love, has been since before he knew that vaguely throw-up-y feeling he got around Eddie didn't happen with all best friends, he looks to Eddie with eyes fond and big behind his glasses. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You want anything?" Richie asks, not unlike a lovesick dweeb, which, he realizes, is exactly what he is, "I can bring you some banana bread?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie hums and sets a hand on his own stomach atop the thick blanket, nose scrunched up as he thinks about, Richie guesses, the pros and cons of eating in bed. As a kid, he'd be more than happy to eat crackers, toast, Richie's emergency stash of Milk Duds, in <em> Richie's </em> bed, especially when he wasn't sleeping over, but when Richie would do so much as munch on a Lifesaver while lounging on Eddie's bed, he'd get shrieked at about crumbs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Can you bring me some popcorn?" Eddie asks. He gives Richie the biggest puppy-dog eyes he can muster, and Richie wonders if Eddie knows he'd do anything without The Eyes. He also wonders if Eddie knows that The Eyes have turned his brain into soup since he hit puberty. "Please?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie heaves a great big sigh, one he's sure Eddie can see right through, and dips himself into a sweeping bow, voice shifting again, this time into a well-practiced Alfred, "Yes, Master Bruce." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie's gone in a flash, turning on his heel to pound back down the stairs. He throws a bag of popcorn, the last in the box, into the microwave, punches the popcorn button since Eddie isn't there to tell him he shouldn't—Eddie fucking floors it when Richie uses the popcorn button instead of <em> following what the fucking packet says, Richie, it says </em> right there <em> not to fucking use the popcorn button, can’t you fucking </em> read<em>?</em>—and slices off two big pieces of banana bread, dropping them into the toaster. They pop up as the microwave beeps, so he butters them fast, sets them on a paper towel, and dumps the bag of popcorn into the red bowl. He grabs their reusable water bottles, one of Eddie’s recent purchases, and fills them quickly before he juggles everything he's carrying around so he doesn't risk dropping all of it, and hurries back to Eddie's room. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You're a godsend," Eddie practically moans as he sniffs the air, smelling the fake butter of the popcorn, and the combination of his voice and his flared nostrils does <em> something </em> to Richie that he hopes can't be perceived as his brain screams at his dick to <em> tone it down, horndog </em>when it gives a threatening twitch in his pants. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I'll remember that next time I leave my socks in the living room and you call me Satan incarnate," Richie says with a wide grin, plopping the red popcorn bowl and Eddie’s teal Camelback onto Eddie's nightstand. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You leave your fucking sweaty, gross socks in the living room ever again and you won't be <em> alive </em> to remember anything."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You're so cute when you're angry, Spaghetti!" Richie coos, and he absolutely fucking means it, always has, but maybe Eddie doesn't know that. He reaches out to pinch Eddie's cheek. "Cute, cute, cute!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Touch me and die," Eddie grunts, slapping at Richie's hand when it gets too close, and he won't admit it, won't acknowledge it, but he's smiling, too. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie nods, pouting his lower lip out, then cackles as he brings his hand up to ruffle Eddie's hair quickly. Eddie yells, and Richie sprints out of the room faster than he thought himself capable, slamming first Eddie's door behind him and then his own when he's safe inside his room. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The last thing he hears as he leans against his door, stuffing his mouth with a big bite of banana bread that he hopes will keep him from squealing like a fuckin' teenage girl, is Eddie's voice, too loud for how late it is, hollering <em> you wanna meet God, Tozier?</em>, and he laughs so hard he almost chokes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>* * * *</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The rule about not talking about it gets broken that Friday after Eddie finishes his work meetings, but it isn’t Richie who breaks it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It comes up while they’re out at Sam’s Club, stocking up on pantry staples. Grocery shopping used to be something Richie absolutely loathed, and he took way too much advantage of grocery delivery options before Eddie moved in. He especially hated big box stores and places that are known for selling shit in bulk. They’re liminal spaces in the worst way, and he always feels like he trips a dimension as he walks down the aisles, pushing a comically large grocery cart. He used to avoid Sam’s Club and Costco for that reason—plus, like, why the fuck would he need a jar of peanut butter the size of his head or a family-size bag of frozen shrimp?—but Eddie adores buying shit in bulk, which is so very <em> Eddie </em>of him that it warms Richie’s heart. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>As they meander through the store, bunched in close together while they bitch and bicker about whether they should buy the huge box of Welch’s Mixed Fruit fruit snacks or the Berries ‘n Cherries version Eddie prefers, Richie realizes that maybe he hated grocery shopping because it was much less fun when he was by himself. There’s something really <em> nice </em>, in a domestic sort of way, about watching Eddie squint at the seven or eight non-dairy milk options in the big refrigerator section, muttering to himself about calories and fats before he picks the same brand of oat milk he finished that morning at the house.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They’re walking down the snack aisle, Richie eyeing the massive bags of Salt and Vinegar chips hungrily and wondering if he can hold off until dinner, when Eddie stops in front of the store’s selection of popcorn.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“We’re out, so what kind do we want?” Eddie’s got his hands on his hips as he scans the shelf in front of them, and it’s the same way he used to inspect snack shelves at the dollar store in Derry, the same way he used to glare at the movies on the shelf at Family Video, and Richie remembers, as if he could forget, that Eddie has been his favorite person for decades. “Butter Lovers or Movie Theater?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“There’s a difference?” Richie asks, partly to be a dick and partly because, like, is there? He slouches and leans his elbows onto the shopping cart handle. Eddie had, like every time they shop, disinfected the handle thoroughly with one of those little cart wipes at the store’s entrance, and even though they’ve been walking around for at least twenty minutes, the sharp smell of bleach and artificial lemons hits Richie's nose and makes it wrinkle up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Apparently,” Eddie muses, grabbing one of the massive boxes—Do they really need thirty bags of popcorn? They might, Richie supposes—and looking at its label. He’s squinting, and Richie can’t suppress the big goofy grin that spreads across his face.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You forgot your reading glasses, Gram’a.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Hm?” Eddie turns to him and blinks, feigning innocence and confusion in spite of the color painting itself high on his cheekbones at the mention of the cheaters Richie saw for the first time a couple days after Eddie moved in. He only uses them when he absolutely has to, like when he reads the paper or does puzzles in his Jumbo Jumble book Richie picked up for him on a whim during a CVS trip. They’re these semi-rounded, semi-rimless glasses, kind of like if Richie’s glasses and Stan’s glasses had a lovechild, and Richie really, really loves them. “You say something, four-eyes?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“My my, aren’t <em> we </em>a sensitive, hateful little man?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>We </em> will beat your scrawny ass in the middle of this fucking store.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Edward, please, not in front of the children!” Richie hisses, and he grins when Eddie looks around frantically for the kids who he just corrupted before Richie jerks a thumb towards the value box of Goldfish crackers next to the popcorn, “Their baby ears!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie scoffs and turns back to his label-reading. “I hate you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You don’t.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I absolutely do,” Eddie says, plonking the box of Butter Lovers, their usual, into the cart. When he straightens up, he shakes the sheet of notebook paper their list is on in Richie’s face. “I was going to ask if you wanted anything special for a midnight snack tonight, but fuck you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie really has to fight the urge to gasp. That’s the first time they’ve so much as mentioned what they do at night—oh, Jesus, that sounds <em> dirty </em> and now Richie is thinking about <em> that</em>—and Eddie is so stupidly casual about it that Richie is speechless for a good ten seconds.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You good, dude?” Eddie teases him as he inches down the aisle, the notebook paper still fluttering where it’s clutched in his hand. He’s taking careful steps backwards, encouraging Richie to follow along, and if Richie could form a thought that wasn't incredibly embarrassing, he’d probably ask what the statistics are for falling on one’s incredibly toned ass while walking backwards down Aisle 34 of Sam’s Club.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As it stands, though, his brain is lagging, so he just pushes the cart and says the first thing that crosses his mind that doesn't involve professing his undying love. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I hate the way you say dude," Richie snorts, and it's a lie, because of course he adores—oh, <em> gros</em><em>s</em>—every single word that comes out of Eddie's thin-lipped mouth, but it's enough to wind Eddie up so shit doesn't feel so weird.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"The fuck is that a supposed to mean?" Eddie asks as they approach the produce area, somehow managing to both give Richie a truly epic bitch face and thump watermelons with the heel of his palm at the same time. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You sound," Richie explains, grabbing one of those flimsy plastic bags and pawing at it uselessly until he miraculously peels it open to start stuffing roma tomatoes inside, "like a middle-aged North Englander when you say <em> dude</em>." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie frowns, eyebrows pinched down so far they're almost between his big eyes, and looks at Richie like he's both an idiot and an inconvenience.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I'm a forty-year-old from fucking <em> Maine</em>," Eddie snaps, still giving Richie that look even as he scoops up the watermelon he deems acceptable and checks the list in his fist for the twenty-millionth time, "We're both forty-year-olds from Maine, you fuckin' dweeb." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Ahh," Richie says, drawing out the vowel until it's almost a sigh as he drops a bag of snack peppers into the cart, one finger up in a <em> gotcha, fucker </em> sort of way, "So you admit you have a Nor'easter accent." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This conversation, or some variation of it, has happened countless times since that night at the Jade of the Orient when Eddie, the cute-ass lightweight he is, got full-on tipsy off of two glasses of red—'<em>s why I drink white, red goes to m' head fast</em>—and really let that sharp, biting accent shine through, far more New England than New York. He denied he had any kind of accent then—<em>I</em><em>'m talkin' like the fuckin' rest'a you!</em>—and every time it was brought up since.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Make fun'a the way I talk one more time and I'm gonna kick you in the nuts. You'll talk funny then, too." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie's being loud, loud enough that the poor guy stocking bags of baby carrots a couple feet away is watching them with vague interest, but his eyes are shining with childish glee, and Richie feels exactly like he used to when he'd call Eddie shortstack and Eddie would threaten to <em> take you out at the knees so we'll be even, dickhole</em>—see: fuckin' delightful. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Ooh, Spaghetti, don't threaten me with a good time!" Richie says, batting his eyes and making his voice get both creaky and suggestive in tone, jumping octaves as Eddie leads them away from produce and to the bakery section, "You know I love a good ballbustin’'." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie snickers, but he certainly doesn't look like he wants to, and he buries his face in that dumb list that Richie is sure he has memorized by now. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You're so <em> nasty</em>. Did you ever mentally mature past, like, thirteen?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"That's the trauma, babycakes," Richie grins, shoving the cart a little too close to Eddie just to watch him yelp and hop in a desperate attempt to protect his heels, "And don't yuck my yums! I might be into cock and ball torture, you don't know!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This time, Eddie lets out a wonderfully ugly snort and laughs from his belly and that is yet another point for Tozier, not that Richie's counting. If he was, though, he’d be winning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You started crying when you slammed your finger in the cutlery drawer yesterday. You couldn't handle cock and ball torture." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Hey, when you nearly snap your pinkie in half, it hurts!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sure, it wasn't broken—Eddie checked, even going so far as to slip on those loathsome reading glasses so he could go full Dr. K—and it wasn't bruised and there wasn't even a red mark there anymore, but it still fuckin' smarted bad! Sue him for not having full control over his tear ducts! </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie doesn't dignify that with a response as he grabs a massive plastic baggie stuffed with bagels—onion, Richie's favorite, because they got Eddie's favorite, which are cinnamon raisin because what <em> else </em>would they be, when he first moved in and he suggested they trade off as long as Richie swore not to get too close to him with onion-breath—and then gestures to a container of brownies with rainbow sprinkles. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Wanna split these tonight?" Eddie asks, grabbing the container and gesturing to Richie with it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This time, Richie is a little more prepared for the question, so he just bobs his head and smiles. The dessert reminds him a little of the cosmic brownies he’d split with Eddie at lunch when they were kids. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Sure thing, Eds," he smiles, taking the container and setting it in the cart, "We can crush these while we kick Stan's ass at your grandma word game." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie gives him that bright, toothy smile, one that Richie always seemed to get more than anyone else, and Richie swears the rest of the world could get nuked and he wouldn't notice as long as Eddie was looking in his direction.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>God, he's a <em> sap</em>. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"All we gotta get is," Eddie hums, waving the list at Richie, "your nasty frat boy beer, then we can go." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"<em>Excuse </em> me," Richie says, scandalized even as he directs the cart to the section by the front with the cases of beer. "Who's the one who finished off the last of my Mickey supply? If memory serves, t'weren't <em> this </em> frat boy." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie rolls his eyes and gives Richie a single-fingered salute, then starts lecturing about proper lifting form as Richie stoops down to grab a case of Michelob, and Richie wonders how the hell he's going to survive when his whole heart is owned by a five-foot-nine shithead that'll drink nasty beer and eat brownies with him in the wee hours of the morning.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. saturday, wait</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Saturday, the greater Los Angeles area falls victim to a downpour that turns out to be the biggest one in recent memory. The heavy, fat raindrops start falling sometime before Richie and Eddie’s lunch of sandwiches—Richie makes them because Eddie tends to skimp out on the mayo, and he piles turkey and cheddar onto some multi-grain for Eddie and ham and American cheese on sourdough for himself—and a shared plate of Garden Salsa Sun Chips, and there seems to be no end in sight by the afternoon. Richie spends a couple hours after lunch outside, sitting under the protection of the big patio umbrella with a legal pad and a kitschy, multi-colored pen that he can’t stop clicking, determined, just like he was when he had them as a kid, to somehow make two colored points poke out the bottom at the same time. He’s trying to get some ideas down, just snippets of jokes that might become a tight five if he buckles down and actually workshops them. He’s rusty, but it’s kind of fun, Eddie’s a decent audience, and the bits he sends in the Losers group chat get some chucks. He stays, slouched in one of the patio chairs that hurts his ass and his back, until the thunder starts rolling in and he runs inside, soaked the second he’s out from under the umbrella. He winds up nearly falling on his ass when his wet, bare feet hit the hardwood inside the sliding doors.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Je-<em>s</em><em>us</em>!” he yelps, windmilling his arms to balance himself, legal pad paper flapping uselessly.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie squints up at him from where he’s lounging on the L-shaped sofa. He, Richie thinks, has the right idea; after his morning run, he showered and put on a clean pair of running shorts, royal purple, and an old, threadbare t-shirt, faded yellow with a Thundercats logo over his sternum, and now he’s snug as a bug under a throw blanket that Richie got on Amazon when he was drunk. It looks like a big tortilla, and Eddie has himself burritoed inside it. He looks so comfortable, so cozy, and Richie shivers for a whole host of reasons, most unrelated to the chill of the damp fabric clinging to his skin.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You good, banana-heels?” Eddie asks him, corners of his thin lips lifted in this barely-there smirk, his Bambi eyes bright and happy. “It’s still your night to do dishes, even if you snap your neck.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie, full of grace and maturity, sticks his tongue out and wipes his feet on the fluffy rug close to the patio door, just because he knows Eddie hates it when he does, hates it when Richie goes outside barefoot period.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It’s pissin’ pussies and puppies out there,” Richie says, tossing his legal pad and pen onto the coffee table before flopping down dramatically next to Eddie and tipping his head to rest on Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie didn’t come sit with him outside, which is something he does sometimes, doing a Sudoku or crossword puzzles while Richie works, bothering Richie every time he <em> can’t figure out where the fuckin’, goddamn five goes </em> or <em> who the fuck knows the first drummer for the Beatles? </em>Richie always pauses what he’s scribbling or muttering to take a look at the mess of numbers, to lecture Eddie on the trials and tribulations of Pete Best, to see the way Eddie smiles at him over the top rim of his reading glasses, perched low on his nose.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>All of this is to say that he hasn’t seen Eddie in a few hours, so he’s basically contractually obligated to be a little shit and get all up in his space. He’s been doing the same thing since he was, like, six.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Reminiscent of childhood, he’s promptly shoved away, and he lets himself be tipped over until his cheek brushes the faux-leather couch cushion, listens to Eddie grumbling.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Get off’a me, your hair is dripping!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he’s sitting back up, he looks pointedly towards Eddie and shakes his head like a dog, sprinkling little droplets everywhere, and Eddie groans, picking up a throw pillow to guard his face from the impromptu shower. Richie grins, settles his head back where it was again, blinking at Eddie with big, owlish eyes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Better, noodle-head?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Literally, Richie, <em> literally</em>, you’re the most annoying person I’ve ever come in fucking contact with,” Eddie spits, arms crossed over his chest, but he doesn’t push Richie away again, just looks back to the television that’s playing some Game Show Network program Richie doesn’t recognize.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie watches with him for a few quiet minutes, comfortably pillowed against Eddie, glasses askew and digging into his nose in a way that pinches, but doesn’t pinch enough to move. He thinks he might fully shit his pants when he shivers again and Eddie responds by peeling back one edge of the tortilla blanket and letting Richie into the burrito he’s made of himself. Richie scootches close, his denim-covered thighs smooshing into Eddie’s bare ones under the blanket, and Eddie makes a face when the damp fabric brushes against him, but he doesn’t say anything. Richie still doesn’t say anything either, tries to pretend he’s even remotely interested in whatever Joey Fatone is saying to the WASPy show contestants on the flat screen, but when Eddie lolls <em> his </em> head to the side, resting it atop Richie’s, he’s got to say <em> something </em>before he starts fucking weeping or, God forbid, blurts out how in love he is.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“We should get take-out and watch movies,” Richie says, and he still doesn’t move even though he feels like he really, really should. “Get an early dinner.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You just don’t want to wash the dishes,” Eddie accuses, voice so soft it’s almost gentle, gentler than it usually is when he’s bitching, and Richie nearly swallows his tongue when he feels the rumble of Eddie speaking, feels when his jaw moves.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’ll let you pick the movies <em> and </em>where we order from.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie is bargaining, a whiny sort of tinge to his voice, and he knows he sounds like he did when they were kids and he wanted to get Eddie involved in whatever trouble he was concocting. And, like it always does, like it always <em> has</em>, his tone draws a heavy, labored sigh from Eddie, who, Richie notes, <em> also hasn’t moved</em>, and what the fuck is that about?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After another long moment, Eddie sighs again, then hums out a low note that sends more vibrations through the crown of Richie’s head.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Go get outta those wet clothes before you get pneumonia <em> and </em> bring me a beer and we’ll see,” he says, moving his head to let Richie up, and Richie can hear that satisfied smirk in his voice because he can bargain, too, Richie, <em> two can play at that game, motherfucker. </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie’s right hand shoots out, and he doesn’t wait for Eddie to respond, just lays his big palm on top of where Eddie’s fingers are curled around his own left bicep, jostling it in a piss-poor substitute for a handshake.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You got it, chief,” he says, pulling his hand back and <em> not </em>thinking about how solid the muscle of Eddie’s upper arm felt. Richie stands and groans, bobbing his head once before he waltzes through the living room and into the kitchen, heading for the stairs, calling over his shoulder, “Anything for you, chief! Whatever you say, chief!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After Richie changes into comfortable, dry clothes—an obnoxiously red t-shirt with mustard-colored letters that say MY FAVORITE COLOR IS NO PANTS in Comic Sans and a pair of basketball shorts he’s had since college, the elastic so old and stretched-out it’s almost comical—and he tosses Eddie a chilled can of Michelob, they settle into the couch again. They find themselves in the same position, under the blanket, Richie’s head on Eddie’s shoulder, and he does his damnedest to focus on Eddie’s phone screen as Eddie taps through the local take-out restaurant menus he has saved like the neurotic little ball of sunshine he is.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What’s gonna tickle those tastebuds tonight, Eduardo?” Richie asks, eyes tracking the motion of Eddie’s thumb swiping over all the photos in his album labeled Take-Out (LA).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie hums, doesn’t shout at Richie for calling him a silly nickname, and squints down at the small font of a local pizza joint’s menu.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Maybe margherita pizza?” he suggests, turning to look at Richie, and, because Richie is still leaning against him, he nearly brushes their noses together when his eyes lock on Richie’s. “We can get a large, a dozen wings, and a two liter of Coke for less than twenty-five bucks. Sound okay to you?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Hell yeah!” Richie agrees readily, squinting at Eddie’s phone screen, “What kinda wings they got? Man, they used to have these mango habanero ones that were fuckin’ <em> killer</em>. Hurt like a <em> bitch </em> coming out, though, if y’catch my drift.” </p>
<p><br/><br/>Eddie elbows him and yells at him, just a little, for being <em> fucking disgusting all the goddamn time, when will you grow up, Tozier?</em>, but then he orders the habanero wings anyway, with extra ranch for Richie and a cup of bleu cheese for himself. When he sets his phone down, after checking the delivery ETA, Richie frowns at him.</p>
<p><br/><br/>“You like bleu cheese?”</p>
<p><br/><br/>Eddie frowns back, gets that little pinched wrinkle between his angry caterpillar eyebrows, and nods once before he turns back to the television, which has switched over to an episode of Family Feud.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Yeah, Rich, some of us are adults and can eat bitter things.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie just snorts and leans heavier against Eddie, ignores the way his heart pounds stupidly when Eddie doesn’t push him away. “Just didn’t think you’d be down to clown with mold of any kind, dude.”</p>
<p><br/><br/>Eddie huffs, long-suffering and annoyed, like Richie is trying his patience with every word he speaks, and maybe he is. He doesn’t say so, though, so Richie just turns to the TV, too, and tries to ignore how much he misses Richard Karn every time he sees Steve Harvey’s ugly mug.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The pizza arrives and Eddie gets up this time, thanking the delivery girl and tipping her extra for getting it to them even earlier than the ETA timer promised. He cracks open a second can of beer and tosses one to Richie, then sets about situating their food on the coffee table, forcefully pushing Richie’s feet off the corner he had them perched on. Richie opens his mouth to bitch, but Eddie fills the open spot with several more beers and a packet of wet wipes so they won’t have to get up any time soon, and he’s grateful enough for the ingenuity that he keeps quiet.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Alright, Skeds, what’re we watching?” Richie asks, once Eddie is sitting next to him again. He’s bunched in close, like he always seems to be, and cradling a paper plate with two slices of pizza, a couple wings, and his little plastic cup of bleu cheese dressing because <em> I’m not eating this shit over the couch without a plate, are you fuckin’ nuts?</em>, and Richie couldn’t be cozier with his own plate to match, cup of ranch dressing on the table instead. “Pick somethin’ good or I’m vetoing.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie has always had notoriously dogshit taste in movies. It isn’t his fault, really, since all his mother used to let him watch was PBS, and even that shit was closely monitored by Mrs. K, sitting in her La-Z-Boy like an angry gargoyle in a puce muumuu, but even when Eddie started sneaking to the Aladdin to see shit with the guys or going with Richie to Family Video to rent movies, he never picked anything good. He once tried to convince Richie they should pick up the <em> Mac and Me </em> VHS over fucking <em> Beetlejuice</em>, and Richie threatened to beat the shit out of him in front of the video store cashier.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie watches Eddie’s eyes squint and scan over his, if he does say so himself, pretty impressive collection of DVDs and BluRays. He’s been accused of being a <em> film bro </em>since his college roommate watched him hang up the cork board he’d decorated with movie ticket stubs he’d been collecting since he was, like, eleven, but he feels, like he said then, that there are worse things to be, and it’s not like he’s an obnoxious prick about it… most of the time, anyway.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie gets up from the couch and crouches down so low his knees pop, eyeing the boxsets Richie keeps on the bottom shelf of his display rack. He grabs something and turns it over in his hands a couple times, then flashes the front cover towards Richie with a secretive little smile.</p>
<p><br/><br/>“Would you believe I’ve never seen these?”</p>
<p><br/><br/>Mouth hanging open, Richie blinks, sort of just, like, processing for a second before he snaps his mouth shut and shakes his head.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“No way! <em> You </em> haven’t seen <em> Lord of the Rings</em>? You were a Tolkien freak, freak!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie shrugs and stands again, scrunching his nose up at either the name-calling or the way his knees crack again, shaking the gold-flaked cardboard in Richie’s direction.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Yeah, I was… I dunno, man, I just never… wanted to see it?” Eddie says this like it’s a question, like Richie might have the answer to it. He brings a hand up to rub at the slight shadow on his jaw, setting the box down on the only free spot on the coffee table. “It, like, didn’t feel right. Myra wasn’t… big on movies, so...I watched the trailers and shit, but, y’know, it felt like something was <em> missing, </em>so I never watched any of them. ”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie’s mind flashes back so hard and so fast he knows it must be written all over his face. He remembers, with vivid clarity, the sweltering summer <em> After</em>, when all of them tried, and failed, to pretend like they weren’t looking for a clown around every corner. They still hung out, all seven of them when Beverly would visit with her aunt, and they spent a lot of that summer, like the one before, down in the clubhouse. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He and Eddie still fought over the hammock, but never quite as loudly, quite as vehemently, and he remembers how fast they both were to just accept their fate, squishing in close together, smelling like sticky summer sweat and coconut sunscreen and BO barely masked by SpeedStick or Old Spice or <em> ah, fuck, I definitely forgot deodorant, my pits fuckin’ reek, man, don’t get too close! </em> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>That was the year Richie’s sister moved away for college and gave him express permission to peruse the little green bookshelf in her room, stocked with all the books she couldn't take with her. Among her impressive collection of Judy Blume—Richie read both <em> Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret </em> and <em> Forever </em> by flashlight that summer, hidden under the ratty old afghan he kept in his room, and he never told a fucking <em> soul </em> , not even his sister when she asked over Thanksgiving break, frantically wagging one of the Blumes in his face, why the corners of some of her books were dog-eared when she <em> specifically asked you not to dog-ear the ones you read, Richie, use a fucking bookmark, Christ!</em>—and Baby-Sitters Club was a boxset of J.R.R. Tolkien classics she’d gotten for Hannukah from their aunt.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie started reading <em> The Fellowship of the Ring </em> one warm afternoon that summer while he, Stan, and Ben waited for the others to arrive. Stan and Ben played chess while he tore through the first fifty pages or so, then Eddie and Bill finally got there, Mike following soon after. Eddie whined when someone suggested they play monopoly since it was only the six of them and they had enough pieces—Eddie always lost Monopoly with gusto, starting strong and winding up with his head in his hands and, like, two properties to his name after an hour—so Richie wound up sitting out with him, settling in on opposite sides of the hammock while the other four sat on the floor with the board. When Eddie finished the comic he was reading, he nudged Richie with his foot and asked what the bigass book was, and when Richie started explaining the premise, Eddie's big eyes got even wider and lit up like it was the best thing he'd ever heard. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>So, they read the series together. Eddie could have gotten his own copies from the library or just waited for Richie to finish a book and hand it off, but he didn't. He shoved and pushed at Richie until he was able to lay almost entirely on top of him in the hammock, book resting on his chest while his head sat right below Richie's chin, the same way they read those shorter sci-fi books together. He demanded Richie start from the beginning. Richie bitched for a good five minutes, but he gave in, because even then he was so hopelessly in love with the little twerp he would have bent over backwards if he thought it would make Eddie happy. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>That day, as the light dwindled and the Monopoly game raged on—that game started the infamous Monopoly Tournament of 1990, in which friendships were put to the ultimate test, Richie insisted he only could win as the racecar and refused to play otherwise, and Beverly wound up wiping the floor with them by winning four games when she was only present for five of the ten in their little bracket that Mike drew up on a piece of lined notebook paper that had someone’s old math homework scribbled on the other side—Richie and Eddie read that fifty pages again. It took longer, and Richie was reminded of two things: he reads fast, and Eddie reads slow. They had since they were little kids, and Richie had several unpleasant memories of Eddie, age five or six, bawling his eyes out because someone teased him for struggling with <em> The Cat in the Hat </em> or <em> Horton Hears a Who</em>. He got a little tripped up on words sometimes, that was all, but he was—<em>is</em>—fiercely embarrassed about it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They finished the series by the time school started again. Sonia hated that Eddie was reading them, said they were <em> of the devil, Eddie, why can't you read your Bible instead?</em>, so Richie had to lug them around everywhere. He also made a conscious effort to let Eddie set the pace, waiting for Eddie to tap his arm to turn the page, giving it at least a couple seconds to pretend like he was catching up before he actually turned it, a trick he learned when they read <em> Stranger in a Strange Land </em> curled up on the rec room couch at Richie's when they were twelve. He knew that Eddie knew what he was doing, but they never talked about it. Eddie appreciated it, though. That was clear from the secret smiles he'd try to hide when Richie fumbled with the page. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"We gotta have a marathon," Richie insists after either seconds or hours of getting lost in memories, pushing up to his feet and plonking his plate down on the coffee table. He grabs for the boxset and slides out the separate case for the first movie, opening it with a click before he twists to stab a finger at the power button on the DVD player. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Isn't that, like, a ten hour commitment?" Eddie asks, but he grabs the remote and flicks the input to the correct HDMI cable for the DVD player anyway. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie hits the eject button and scoops out the DVD inside by jabbing his finger through the center hole. He hasn't used the player since before Eddie got there, its last use for when Bill came over for drinks the week before he went on his and Mike's Big Gay Adventure and they watched a bunch of 80s movies. The DVD is from his collector's edition copy of <em> The Goonies </em> , which is painfully ironic, considering. He tosses the <em> Fellowship of the Ring </em> disc in and presses the button again before he searches his shelf for the proper case and slides the other disc inside. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Extended edition is a little over twelve, if memory serves," Richie corrects, shooting Eddie a bright, toothy grin as he sits back on the sofa and grabs the remote to fast-forward through previews. He nods to the wall clock, an ugly orange thing he pilfered from the dining room at his childhood home before his parents sold the house and moved to be closer to his sister and her brood of kids. "We start now, we'll finish at, like, quarter after four in the morning. That's totally doable." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He prays his voice just sounds hopeful and not fucking <em> floored </em> at the idea of <em> staying up </em> with Eddie rather than <em> meeting up </em> late in the night. It's a totally different ballgame, like comparing the pick-up ball games from their youth—or, more accurately, his old man pitching underhanded wiffle balls to him and Bill and Stan and Eddie, swinging and missing with thick plastic bats, running in little circles around the Tozier backyard that his mom swore made her dizzy to watch—to the major leagues, and the idea of it has been slingshotting its way around Richie's brain since, like, the third time they hung out in his kitchen after <em> hey, heading to bed, see'ya at three, Eds</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie frowns, and Richie's stomach swoops uncomfortably as he fumbles a little with the remote, a <em> we don't have to, though, haha </em> on the tip of his tongue, burning against the back of his crooked front teeth as Eddie sits next to him and pulls his plate back into his lap. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"We're in our fucking forties, dude," Eddie says, and Richie feels more wind whoosh out from under his sails before, "we're both gonna have to get up for the bathroom at least, like, four times. That takes us to probably five o'clock. So, we should start right now and cancel any plans we have for tomorrow because I know for a <em> fact </em> your ass isn't gonna get up before noon if you get up at <em> all</em>." </p>
<p><br/>The sigh Richie lets out as he presses play is so loud Eddie laughs at him, and Richie suspects he <em> knows </em>, just like he knew Richie didn't really read that slow when they were kids, like he knew whacking the wiffle ball up onto the low arch of the roof wasn't nearly as impressive as Richie's screaming cheers for him made it out to be, but as he finally gets to take a bite of his pizza, giggling like the dumb thirteen year old he never stopped being when the cheese stretches into strings and Eddie gags next to him as he saws through them with a crooked pinky finger, he decides that being known by Eddie isn't all that bad.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. spirits rise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And just like that, staying up together becomes the new normal. They manage to get through the whole <em> Lord of the Rings </em> trilogy from Saturday afternoon into the wee hours of Sunday morning—it should be pointed out, too, that Eddie was right on the money for the amount of times they'd have to pause to piss, especially after crushing at least eight beers between them, but Richie is still a little too embarrassed to admit it even though Eddie was <em> there </em> and <em> knows</em>—and they stumble to their rooms, both a little drunk and a lot tired, well after the first tweets of the birds who eat from the little feeder in Richie's yard filter into the house. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sunday, they're practically joined at the hip after they wake up and shower, but Richie is far from complaining. After a late lunch of leftover pizza, he helps Eddie with some meal prep for the week ahead. Eddie is going into the LA office of his company on Tuesday and Thursday just to feel things out, and Richie is corn-syrup giddy about it, about what it means for the <em> future</em>, but he tries not to let that show. He just lets Eddie talk about office size and desk space and proximity to the water cooler and vending machines while he pan-fries some salmon and Richie cuts up carrots and cabbage and bean sprouts for some kind of slaw salad thing Eddie found on Pinterest. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"They're offering me a pay raise, like I told you, but they've sweetened the pot with a corner office and an even bigger bump than they promised at first," Eddie explains as he prods at his salmon with the end of the tongs, flipping it and squeezing a bit more lemon juice from the wedge he's kept at the side of the stove top. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They both elected to stay in comfortable clothes again today, like almost every day Eddie isn't working with a webcam on for meetings, and Richie's heart feels like a lump of melted Laffy Taffy, all gooey and warm and disgustingly sweet, at the sight of Eddie in an oversized sweatshirt of Richie's that says COLLEGE in big letters across the front and a pair of sweats. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie lent him the sweatshirt on a laundry day and never got it back, but, again, he wasn't complaining, especially when he dug up the t-shirt he had that matched the design on the sweatshirt and found a pair of sweatpants the same shade of faded navy as the ones Eddie wore. He convinced Eddie to take a dumb mirror selfie to caption <em>when you hashtag twin with your hashtag roommate #amihashtaggingrightyet?? </em>when he tossed it up on Instagram. Eddie frowned through the whole process, including during the photo itself, but that just made it funnier. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"And," Eddie says, sprinkling salt and pepper over his salmon and pressing it down with the tips of his tongs until it sizzles louder, "since I've, like, proven I can get a lot of the shit done without being in the office, the one woman I was emailing back and forth with let it slip that they might give me a flex day or two every week. I think they're afraid I'm gonna go back to the New York branch, y'know, so they're kissing my ass a little, but, hey, I'll take it."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Hell yeah, sounds pretty sweet, especially the flex thing," Richie says as he shakes the little Tupperware container of veggies before he adds a splash of rice wine vinegar—he's a creamy coleslaw guy himself, but Eddie's the one that's eating it, so—and turns a smile to Eddie, "They know you're the best at what you do, man, of course they're gonna kiss that shapely tuckus to get you to stick around."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie rolls his eyes as he flips his salmon again, but he's smiling and has his head ducked down to try to hide his pinking cheeks. "Do you even know what it is that I do? Like, at all?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Yeah!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Yeah?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You… Analyze risks."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Uh huh…" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"For… Insurance companies?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"And what does that entail, Rich?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie just kind of blinks and opens his mouth in what he's sure is a pretty stellar goldfish impression. In the end, after about five seconds of pondering, trying to dig up what Eddie has told him before he starts spouting numbers and Richie's brain picks up nothing but static, he grabs the little spray nozzle in the sink and flicks the water on, giving Eddie one good spray that makes him yelp and swear and smack Richie <em> hard </em> on the arm. It turns into something of a slap fight, not unlike the ones they had as kids when they were too tired to wrestle properly, but <em> stop touchin' me, Richie, I swear'da God, I'll break your fingers! </em> and <em> that's not what your </em> mom <em> said last night! Ayo, Stan, up top!  </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Fuck you!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Fuck your mom!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"She's dead, you sick fuck! Fuck <em> your </em> mom!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Leave Maggie out of this or I'll call her right now!" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"I'll call her myself and tell her the son she raised is a piece of shit!"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the end, they stash Eddie's Tupperware containers in the fridge and Richie makes them one-pot pasta for dinner, mostly so he gets out of washing a sink full of dishes. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Once they dishwasher is on and Richie finds Eddie sprawled on the couch in the living room, they go laze in the pool for a few hours, sitting on their pool floats—Eddie's on his turtle and Richie's stretched out on an obnoxious pink thing that might be a narwhal but he isn’t sure—and shooting the shit. Richie, over and over, kicks his feet and paddles his hands in the sun-warmed water until their vessels bump together, and Eddie, over and over, flexes his foot and points his toes impressively before he kicks pink vinyl hard enough that he's pushed backwards and far away from Richie. They towel off and head inside, but instead of staying in their rooms until snack time, they just sort of putter around the house, sharing space, sharing company.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie listens to six or seven Golden Girls episodes while he works on some dialogue chunks for a sitcom he knows will never come to fruition, but it's taking up space in his mind so he's gotta get it down, and Eddie listens to a podcast with his Airpods while he starts work on a jigsaw puzzle of birds Stan sent in a package after Eddie complimented the glued and framed one he and Patty had in their living room during a group Zoom call. He mutters darkly to himself about wings and beaks and <em> that has to fuckin' fit there, what the fuck </em> , but Richie doesn't mind. In fact, one of Eddie's creative little outbursts—<em>cocksucking bird </em> fuck<em>, where'd your goddamn wing go, you flightless bastard</em>—inspires a bit so funny Richie has to stretch and grab up his legal pad and add it to his list of jokes to try out on the gang.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It's nice. It's nice to share the space with someone and it's nice that the someone is Eddie and it's really nice when two-thirty in the morning rolls around and Eddie goes to the kitchen and brings back a movie theater-size box of Snowcaps and a can of sour cream and onion Pringles, settling next to Richie on the couch. He tucks his feet up, worming his cold toes under the spot where Richie's thigh meets his ass, and wriggles them like they belong there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"How's the puzzle?" Richie asks, flexing his quads against the ticklish feeling before he's swiping the Pringles tube and snagging up three or four chips to crunch down at once. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Mm, not bad," Eddie says, looking remarkably content for a dude in his forties twisted up like a pretzel against the arm of a sofa, toes still curling and stretching under the seat of Richie's sweats. Maybe it's the yoga Eddie does in the backyard sometimes, or maybe his body doesn't feel as old as Richie's, or maybe not spending your twenties trying to find a combination of alcohols that would knock you out long enough to stop the self-loathing made you more flexible. "How're the girls?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Excellent, as always." Richie says around another mouthful of Pringles, expertly ignoring the way his heart clenches painfully at the reminder of how many years of his life were spent so lonely. If he dwells, he'll cry, and Eddie will be far too sweet to him about it, and he can't handle that now. So, he grabs the Snowcaps and pours out a handful, shovels them down. "You want me to grab us some water?" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie gets up to fill their reusable water bottles with ice and cold water from the refrigerator dispenser before Eddie can answer, grunting as his joints crackle and pop while he walks. When he comes back, Eddie smiles up at him so bright and happy it feels like sunshine, and he's got to untangle the knot of emotions in his gut because that makes him want to cry, too, but he gets to listen to Eddie sing <em> Miami, You've Got Style</em>, word-perfect and giggling, along with the girls, so it's worth it. When he joins in, that achy feeling in his chest subsides, and then fizzles away entirely as Eddie snatches the Snowcaps and suggests they watch another episode.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>* * * *</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The next few days pass in a pleasant blur. Eddie insists upon going to bed at a reasonable time Monday night, so they only stay up until just after one together, Eddie drinking a cup of chamomile tea and Richie drinking hot chocolate with spiced rum splashed in, sitting too close on the sofa and watching a M*A*S*H marathon on TV Land. They watch the Movie Tonight episode, and when Richie stands to do a full performance of "Gee Ma, I Wanna Go Home," really making use of his Alan Alda Voice, Eddie laughs so hard tears are rolling down his cheeks and he's holding his sides. Richie preens and proceeds to pull out a Father Mulcahy impression better than anyone's on the show, and Eddie cackles again. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When they go upstairs to bed—well, Eddie will sleep, hopefully, if the way he's blinking long and slow says anything, but Richie knows he won't pass out for at least a few more hours—Eddie gives him an impromptu hug, says it's for luck since he won't see Richie before he goes into the office in the morning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Incidentally, Richie surprises both himself and Eddie by dragging his ass out of bed at seven, when Eddie is making a pot of coffee in his pajamas. Still rubbing sleep out of his half-closed eyes, Richie gives Eddie another hug and smacks a too-tender kiss against Eddie's forehead, mumbling a <em> go get 'em, tiger</em>, before he ambles off to the couch to fall back asleep until eleven, wakes up with a stiff neck and several texts from Eddie, both in the group chat and just to him, of excited chatter and pictures of his office space. If Richie is worried about his display of sleepy affection that morning—and trust him, he is—the nerves lessen when Eddie sends him a photo of his desk, totally bare apart from a little plaque with his name on it and a framed picture.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It's of them, just the two of them, from a couple days after Eddie finished moving his shit in. They'd gone out for dinner and drinks to celebrate and Richie managed to convince a tipsy Eddie to take a low-light selfie with him to send to the group. Their waitress offered to take a better one for them, so they stood together for a nice photo and then one where Richie gave Eddie bunny ears and Eddie arched his eyebrow at the camera in a scrutinizing sort of way, the same look he used to give Richie when he could tell Richie's sweet tone meant something was up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The one Eddie chose to print and frame, and send in a text to Richie with a peace sign and a green heart emoji, is the dumb one. Richie smiles so wide his cheeks hurt and he has to bury his face in the couch cushion, then text Stan eight separate messages. Stan, like the champion buddy he is, says <em> fuck off, I'm working </em> followed by <em> that's sweet, though </em> followed by <em> You tell him yet or are we still in ninth grade and you don't have the stones to ask him to be your Valentine? </em> Richie sends a middle finger emoji in response and then puts his phone down to go make lunch.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Eddie gets home, he hugs Richie again, the tightest so far, and then kicks his loafers off and sprawls out on the sofa, chinos and dress shirt still on, tie barely loosened, and he takes a nap. He cuddles a throw pillow close to his chest and grunts when Richie tries to change the TV channel from the cooking show Eddie had flicked on about two seconds before he was down for the count. Richie has to take a walk, a real walk around the neighborhood with his ear buds in and sweat rolling down his back in fat drips, just to avoid watching Eddie sleep like some creep.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That night, while they eat popcorn and watch Snapped, Eddie tells Richie he got the option to do two flex days a week and he's going to take them. He starts the following Monday, working from home, and he goes into the office Thursday to pick up what he needs for setting up his desk at home. That means his almost-daily habit of going for jogs around the neighbor is toast unless he wants to get even less sleep than he already does, but there's an in-office gym that he's free to use whenever he's got a long enough break from clients, so he's not too worried. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Richie congratulates him and asks where he wants to get dinner to celebrate, Eddie gives him a one-armed hug that squishes them together on the couch.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>* * * *</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Wednesday, they go out for groceries they didn't grab at Sam's Club and Richie convinces Eddie that they oughta stop for fast food for lunch. Eddie admits, in this quiet voice, hands gripping the steering wheel too tight as he swings into a parking space at Wendy's, that he hasn't had fast food since he was in high school, and Richie promises, hand over heart, to rectify that. Eddie is a little overwhelmed, in the cutest way, by the fancy Coke machine, and settles on Sprite, because of course he does. They eat their matching baconators—Richie insisted, especially when Eddie made a face at the blown-up picture of the burger and muttered something about getting a salad instead—and bicker about what they'll have for dinner, what movie or show they'll watch tonight, and Richie realizes, in a faraway corner of his mind, that the rest of the people in the building probably think they're a couple.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Since Eddie has to go in, they pack in pretty early, ice cream dishes freshly washed by Nervous Nellie Kaspbrak who insists they'll wake up to ants in the sink otherwise, and when Richie sees Eddie off at the door to his room, they hug again, mumble goodnights into shoulder and neck.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It's getting a little ridiculous.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He doesn't plan to, not really, but Richie wakes up around seven-thirty when his bladder twinges a little too sharply, so he goes downstairs after he pees to find Eddie in a teal button-up and khakis, nursing a cup of coffee as he leans against the kitchen island. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>"You gonna wake up to see me off every morning?" Eddie asks by way of greeting with a wry little smile that he hides behind his mug with the fancy <em> E </em> on both sides, the one that matches Richie's with the fancy <em> R</em>. Eddie found them during a Target trip a couple days prior and Richie came home from a meeting with his agent to find them hanging behind the sink on two little silvery hooks Eddie bought, too. It was so cute he sent a picture to the group chat.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie huffs an embarrassed sound that means yes and they both know it, asks when Eddie will be home, should he have a sandwich ready for him for lunch. It's disgustingly domestic, reminds him vaguely of the way his parents acted over breakfast when he was a kid, and he wonders if Eddie notices that and also maybe notices that they, unlike Mags and Went, aren't <em> together </em> like that. Though, to be fair, these days it's getting hard to tell what exactly they <em> are </em> together like, apart from <em> a couple of fools</em>, according to Stan, and, from a text Bev sends the group that is supposed to just go to Eddie, <em> kinda silly, honey, don't you think? </em>with a laugh-cry emoji and a winky face. Richie means to press her about it; he still intends to, actually, but hasn't found a good moment to pounce.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie helps Eddie hook up his work PC, listens to Eddie babble and complain about tangled cables and surge protectors. Afterwards, they eat lunch under the big patio umbrella and then they laze around in the pool, after waiting a healthy thirty minutes since <em> someone </em> insists they'll cramp up and <em> I'm not saving your sorry ass when you sink like a fucking stone because your belly hurts</em>. Richie argues that his body fat percentage wouldn't let him sink if he tried, but Eddie just hums like he's confused and tilts his head like a puppy, so Richie drops it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When they finally get in the water, Eddie pretends to be impressed when Richie proves he can still do an underwater handstand. Eddie one-ups him, like always, by showing an impressive series of front and back flips, even dunks under and flips around to kick off the wall and shoot himself halfway across the pool. Eddie also bitches for the rest of the night about swimmer’s ear, insists he still feels waterlogged even after he admits to feeling the offending liquid dribble out.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They play board games after dinner, a round of Monopoly that lets Eddie prove he's gotten much better at it since they were teenagers, a couple rounds of Scattergories—they argue about whether <em> penis </em> is acceptable for <em> things you find in a supermarket</em>, and Eddie only lets it slide because Richie is losing spectacularly—and several games of Cards Against Humanity that they play with Stan, Bill, and Mike through a phone app. Richie scream-laughs until his throat hurts, whines that Eddie is so much damn funnier than he is, and accepts the kick in the ass Eddie bestows upon him from the opposite side of the couch when he writes in <em> Mrs. K’s sweet, sweet tits </em> to answer <em> During sex, I like to think about </em> <em> _____ </em>. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie makes them bastardized latkes at two in the morning from the leftover mashed potatoes they had with dinner, sends a picture to his mother of his slathered with sour cream so she has something to yell about when she wakes up—she does, too, sends him a text far too early the next morning reminding him that <em> if you make them right, you don’t need anything on them! </em>—and does his best not to make eyes at Eddie from across the room as Eddie hurries to the kitchen for his serving, knee-length tube socks—he's wearing them with a pair of basketball shorts and a gray tank top, and Richie has asked God and Jesus and fucking Buddha to grant him the strength not to die on the spot—making him slip a little on the tiled floor.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Woah there, cowboy," Richie giggles, fucking <em> giggles </em>, as he reaches out one hand to steady Eddie, palm resting flat over Eddie's collarbone, "what's the risk analysis for sock-skating at this late hour?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Lower than the risk of me bashing your skull in with a plate," Eddie huffs, but Richie can see the way he's biting the inside of his cheek to hold back a smile, "Gimme my food." </p>
<p><br/>They eat, they watch the last third of <em> The Breakfast Club </em> playing on some obscure movie channel Richie didn't even know his cable package came with, they go upstairs to hug before they go to bed in separate rooms like a fuckin' fifties sitcom, and Richie is wonders, even as he's quickly drifting off, what the fuck he's going to do about all this.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>here's a clip of the Golden Girls bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sRQELNLRG8</p>
<p>and here's a clip of the M*A*S*H bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioEp91c5EOo</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. friday, I'm in love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Time moves along. A week passes. Richie is humiliated by how hard it is for him to adjust to Eddie being gone for the better part of the day three times a week, spends too much time pouting and letting his ass make a sorry dent in the sofa cushions while he half-watches bad daytime TV. He gets invested in far too many episodes of Maury, fighting the itch in his fingers to text Eddie every time a paternity test reveals whether the asshole is the father or not. He writes a little, but not nearly as much as he promises himself he will. He wakes up every morning as the asscrack of dawn—Eddie tells him over and over that <em> 7:30 isn’t dawn, moron </em> and <em> no one is making you wake up, shithead, I won’t burn the house down making coffee</em>—and hugs Eddie good morning, even on the days when Eddie is working from home. On the days he’s home, Monday and Friday, Richie whips up a nice lunch for them to have over Eddie’s hour break and steers clear of the office no matter how much he wants to go in and just sit with Eddie, share the space. He’ll work up to it, maybe, but he’s feeling co-dependence like he hasn’t felt since he was sixteen and almost tore out of his own skin when Eddie went on a five day trip with Mrs. K. Stan teased him relentlessly about being so bugged about it until Richie broke down and cried about it in Stan’s backyard, chin wobbling and snot dripping down over the line of scraggly hairs on his upper lip he insisted was a mustache—to be clear, it was not—and Stan backed off with a soft click of his tongue and an <em> oh, Richie </em> that just made him cry harder. </p><p> </p><p>When Eddie finishes work on Friday, he walks out of the office while he tugs off his tie—even if he isn’t on webcam, he dresses the way he would at the office; he says it helps with his productivity, but Richie says it just makes him a nerd—and unbuttons his sleeves.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll let you drive to get groceries and I won’t yell about your shitty driving,” Eddie promises, tossing Richie’s keys in the general direction of where Richie is slouched at the kitchen table, breaking in a fresh legal pad and a pack of multicolored pens he ordered from a too-expensive online stationery store, “if you let me get a nap in the car on the way.”</p><p> </p><p>Clicking his pen closed, Richie smiles like he can’t help it—he can’t—and nods once, hands braced on the table as he pushes himself to his feet.</p><p> </p><p>“You got it, Skeddo,” he says, “you wanna go change first?”</p><p> </p><p>“Nah, let’s go now,” Eddie shakes his head, fighting a yawn and fluttering his big eyes as he leads the way to the door and steps into his penny loafers, since shoes are where he draws the line when working at home. “You still cool with swinging by Dick’s? I wanna see if I can find a new pair of Nikes and they’re having a sale.”</p><p> </p><p>“Eddie, my love, you had me at swingin’ dicks.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s not what I said, fucknut.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hmm, well, Mags always said I hear what I wanna hear.” Richie slips on a pair of his crocs, if only in an effort to piss Eddie off, but all he gets is an eye roll and a weak punch in the shoulder before they’re out the front door and walking to the car.</p><p> </p><p>Eddie snoozes on the way to the store, head resting against the cool passenger seat window, and Richie sneaks little glances at him, at how relaxed his face and angry eyebrows are when he’s asleep, and relishes in the warmth in his chest. When he pulls into the Safeway parking lot, he sets a careful hand on Eddie’s thigh and pats him a couple times.</p><p> </p><p>“Alright, Eds, we’re here, c’mon,” Richie says, voice quiet, careful, like it was when he’d wake Eddie up in the mornings after sleepovers when they were kids. If they were with the others, he’d be a dick if he managed to be up first, yell in ears and bodyslam, but when it was just the two of them, he was impossibly tender. To this day, he’s a little surprised that Eddie never dunked on him for it. He certainly deserved it.</p><p> </p><p>Eddie whines, but he opens his sleepy eyes and rolls his head against the seat, blinks at Richie, and the furrow in his brow immediately smooths out. “Rich?”</p><p> </p><p>Something unfurls in Richie’s belly and he smiles. He hasn’t moved his hand.</p><p> </p><p>“Thats’a me, Ed-io," he says in a passable, if not quiet, Mario Voice," Lets'a go."</p><p> </p><p>“We’re here?”</p><p> </p><p>“Mm-hm. Ready to go in?”</p><p> </p><p>Eddie nods, still looking adorably tired, knuckles at his eyes. He takes a deep breath, shakes his head in what looks like an effort to clear away the groggy fog, and then he’s pushing himself out the door, talking a mile a minute about all the things on the list fisted in his hand.</p><p> </p><p>They make quick work of the store, Richie pushing the cart while Eddie rattles off the things they need and tosses stuff in. They crush their list in under half an hour, and Eddie throws a candy bar for each of them on the register belt, a Snickers for Richie and an original Hershey bar for himself, and shrugs when Richie arches an eyebrow at him, says they deserve a treat for the end of the week. Richie doesn’t argue—who would he be to pass up a Snickers, anway?—and just smiles back, and when they get to the car, he digs through a bag to hand Eddie both bars before he shoves it in the trunk with the rest.</p><p> </p><p>Eddie stays awake on the short drive between Safeway and Dick’s, but he still keeps his promise not to bitch about Richie’s driving. He bitches about at least seven other drivers on the road to make up for it, though, and Richie laughs harder than is advised while piloting a multi-ton vehicle when Eddie screams a hardy <em> if you can’t drive your small-dick truck, get it off the fucking road! </em> at a dude in a snap-back who can’t seem to stay in his own lane.</p><p> </p><p>They get to the sporting goods store, park, and Eddie leads the way inside. Dick’s is definitely not Richie’s scene—even though <em> dicks </em> certainly are, <em> badum-tish</em>! and, oh, maybe that’s a bit he can turn into something—and he’s racking his brain for the last time he set foot inside <em>any</em> sporting goods store as Eddie examines the wall of shoes at the back. When he comes up with nothing, he turns his attention to the shoes, too, grabs a red and white high-top that reminds him a lot of a pair he had in high school.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Eds, these match your schoolgirl socks!” he says, flipping the shoe around to present it to Eddie with a wide grin. “Maybe it’ll fit, Cinderella.”</p><p> </p><p>Eddie rolls his eyes, clearly desperate not to look as fond as he does, the corner of his lips tugging up just enough for a dimple to threaten to dent his cheek. He’s got two shoes in his hand, the same style in different colors, one a stark black and one electric blue with white trim, and he’s eyeing them up like they’ve got state secrets tucked under their tongues. Maybe they do. Richie would be the last to know, after all.</p><p> </p><p>“Those aren’t running shoes, Rich,” Eddie says, setting the black one back on its little shelf, “and, besides, high-tops were always your thing. I wasn’t the wannabe skater.”</p><p> </p><p>“<em> Wannabe</em>?” Richie gasps, slapping the sole of the shoe against his chest as he gives Eddie his best affronted look, “I could skate, you fucking gremlin!”</p><p> </p><p>“You could barely keep your feet on the board.”</p><p> </p><p>“Lies! Defamation!” Richie screeches, even though, if he really thinks about it, maybe Eddie’s right. He does remember getting a lot of scraped knees and elbows right around the time he laid claim on Big Bill’s old skateboard when his part-time job tutoring at the library let him save enough for a new one.</p><p> </p><p>“You rode it for a month and then you gave it to Georgie,” Eddie says, slowly, like Richie is being particularly dim, “and he learned how to ride circles around you in, like, a week and a half.”</p><p> </p><p>Huh. That’s familiar, too. An eleven-year-old brat laughing like a maniac because he could do a kickflip and his brother’s sixteen-year-old buddy could barely move three feet without flopping to the ground like a fish.</p><p> </p><p>“I think I’m gonna go with these,” Eddie turns on his heel, squinting as he scans over the area for a worker, “so I’m gonna find someone and have them grab me a pair in my size. You coming?”</p><p> </p><p>Richie nods, twisting his mouth to the side for a moment before he clutches the shoe a little tighter to his chest.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna get these.”</p><p> </p><p>Eddie smiles, eyes crinkling up at the edges, and leads them to a teenager who snaps her gum and takes both shoes to the back room. They leave the store with two orange boxes and a dartboard they find before they check out—Richie doesn’t have one and the collapsible ping-pong table they stare longingly at is too big to fit in the car, so that’ll have to wait—and they head home, Richie tossing Eddie the keys so he can drive and getting such a happy look in return he can’t avoid staring back, all moony and out of his mind with how goddamn screwed he is.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>They get home, put away groceries, stash the dartboard in the corner of the office where they plan to hang it over the weekend, and start taking out what they need to make tacos for dinner. Eddie changes into a t-shirt and white joggers that cinch at his ankles—one day, Richie will lose what precious little is left of his mind, and it's gonna splash out his ears and all over Eddie and his athleisure wear, and the cute little fucker will deserve each and every gray matter stain—and cracks them each open a can of beer while Richie browns ground beef in a big skillet, drains it, seasons it with his Tozier patented blend of spices; the secret is adding just a little ground ginger to the mix, and he makes a big deal out of telling Eddie that every time, like he didn’t spill the beans on that one when Maggie trusted them to make their own dinner as teenagers and Richie would always vote for tacos. They trade songs back and forth while they work around each other with ease, Eddie frying up tortillas—corn for himself, flour for Richie—and Richie chops up green onions, grates some cheddar, mashes an avocado with the business end of a fork.</p><p> </p><p>The music keeps up when they finish, tucking in at the table together. Richie asks Google to play Wish by The Cure, has the album cycle through quietly in the background while Eddie tells him all about a new client of his. Richie doesn’t understand half of what he’s saying, and they sure as shit both know that, but he nods along, lets Eddie tell him all about Chuck and some kind of overseas something or other the company is doing with him. All he really gets out of it is that Chuck has a cute dog and showed Eddie a bunch of pictures during their Skype meeting, and that’s good enough for him.</p><p> </p><p>"Friday, I’m in Love" plays as they put away leftovers and throw the dishes in the dishwasher, and Richie very nearly cries when they both wind up singing along. He doesn’t really know if he’s always been this disgustingly sappy or if Eddie really brings it out of him, but it doesn’t matter, really.</p><p> </p><p>Most of the evening is spent watching the I.D. channel. They both do a fair amount of shouting at the television, but the most impressive rant comes from Eddie while they’re watching Nightmare Next Door and Eddie, clutching a throw pillow so hard Richie is a little worried the stuffing might explode right out of it, frantically looks from the screen to Richie and back again, in shock because <em> What the fuck do they mean they had no idea? Have they </em> seen <em> this motherfucker? Have they fucking seen his </em> eyes<em>? Are you fucking kidding me? </em>To be fair, the guy did have dead eyes and offered no emotional reaction when confronted about his wife being gone for three weeks—surprise, he’d killed her—so, Eddie had a point.</p><p> </p><p>Just after midnight, an ad for McDonald’s comes on during a commercial break in Wives with Knives, and Eddie lets out a hum, smacks his lips.</p><p> </p><p>“God, now I want McNuggets,” he says, smiling sheepishly. “Remember when your dad would get us a couple'a 20 pieces to share when he’d pick us up from school on Friday? Like, right when my mom first started letting me stay the night? I shared with you and Bill shared with Stan.”</p><p> </p><p>Richie remembers, and he smiles. Eddie wasn’t allowed to spend the night until he was eight or nine, which was a real drag, but that just meant it was super special when his mom and Sharon Denbrough and Andrea Uris tag-teamed Mrs. K until she finally agreed. His dad would pick the four of them up from school Friday afternoon and get two 20 piece nuggets and four small fries for them to share, along with Capri Sun pouches he’d stashed in the passenger seat before he drove to the school. <em> Small fries for my small fries</em>, he’d say, passing the bag back and sipping at the Coke he’d ordered for himself, <em> don’t get ketchup on the upholstery, huh? </em>It made them feel like big kids, getting something other than a Happy Meal, even though they all had to have Billy stab the straw into their juice pouches, since he was the only one who’d mastered the art of it. Richie still struggles, if he’s honest, not to shove the flimsy yellow dagger clear through to the other side, and he knows this because sometimes he buys Aldi-brand juice pouches when he really needs to indulge in the happier moments of his childhood..</p><p> </p><p>The memory, like almost all the ones that swim into his mind when he and Eddie start to reminisce, soothes something deep inside him. He's suddenly overcome with the wild desire to see if he can still make Eddie giggle until his face turns red by tucking two fries between his lip and top teeth, claiming to be part walrus, so he stands and offers Eddie a hand, feels stupid sparks skitter up his arm when Eddie grabs it even though he certainly doesn’t need it, looking to Richie with his brows furrowed together as he stands, too.</p><p> </p><p>“Let’s go,” Richie says, squeezing Eddie’s hand once before he goes to grab his keys and wallet from the bowl on the counter.</p><p> </p><p>“Let’s go?” Eddie asks, but he follows along anyway, turning the TV off, “Go where?”</p><p> </p><p>“To get you nuggets, man, c’mon, they close at one.”</p><p> </p><p>Eddie, surprisingly, just nods and follows, snagging up his own wallet from where he left it on the coffee table. He grabs Richie’s green crocs, which they both know are at least two sizes too big for his feet, turns a look to Richie that roughly translates to <em> say something and I’ll kick you in the dick</em>, so Richie bites his tongue and pulls on his blue ones, and he lets Eddie snatch the keys out of his hand without protest as they walk, in the dark, to the car.</p><p> </p><p>Guiding Eddie to the closest McDonald’s, Richie finds an 80s throwback station on his SiriusXM, makes Eddie laugh as he belts out “Like a Virgin” with an appropriate amount of shoulder wiggling, prodding at Eddie until he joins in. Eddie insists he doesn’t know the words, but Richie calls his bluff, and they wind up shouting the chorus as Eddie pulls up to the drive thru speaker. Richie only stops, with a loud bray of laughter, when Eddie turns the radio down and yells that the poor worker doesn’t need to hear his caterwauling, makes Richie pinky-promise he isn’t going to start again before he rolls the window down.</p><p> </p><p>Richie calls their order to the kid working from the passenger seat when Eddie shoots him a helpless look. He settles, after scanning the board, on a forty piece nugget combo with a large fry and a sweet tea, asks for extra sweet and sour and barbecue sauce. As they pull up to the first window, Eddie looks to him again, mouths <em> forty? </em> and Richie shrugs and pats his tummy twice, which makes Eddie bite back a sharp bark of laughter.</p><p> </p><p>They pay, pull forward, grab the big bag and cardboard cup. Richie double-checks that they got everything, including the extra sauces, and when he nods, satisfied, Eddie pulls back out of the parking lot and starts the drive home.</p><p> </p><p>“Wanna fry?” Richie asks, one hand diving into the bag to pull out a handful. When Eddie nods and opens his mouth, a playful smile on his face and a glint in his eyes, Richie lets the butterflies swirl around his gut without stifling them, just this once, and pops two fries into Eddie’s mouth, grinning like a lunatic when Eddie groans his appreciation at the salt bursting across his tongue.</p><p> </p><p>“Can I ask a dumb question?” Eddie asks around the bite  as he follows the direction Richie jerks his thumb, turning up a road that shifts from business district to residential after about half a mile.</p><p> </p><p>Richie, halfway through shoving two fries against his incisors and holding them in place with his lip, turns to blink at Eddie.</p><p> </p><p>“Dumb question? To <em> moi</em>?” he asks, a little slurred around the fries that are certainly growing soggy, and he smiles hard enough that they fall into his lap when Eddie giggles just the way he’d hoped he would. He scoops them up and chomps them down, ignoring the wounded sound Eddie makes because yeah, it’s gross, but <em> he’s </em>gross and he’s not gonna let good fries go to waste. “Shoot, Spaghetti Head.”</p><p> </p><p>Eddie hums, and Richie doesn’t miss the way his face morphs into something decidedly more worried. He chews his lower lip, sucking it between his teeth until there’s basically no lip left to see, and he flicks his eyes to Richie, then back to the road in front of him. His hands tighten on the steering wheel.</p><p> </p><p>“I just… I can’t, like, decide if I should feel bad? About our… situation?”</p><p> </p><p>Something hot and uncomfortable plummets in Richie’s gut because what the <em> fuck </em>does that mean? One hand carefully settles just over his navel, fingers kneading in just a little because the last thing he needs right now is to blow chunks, but that’s exactly what it feels like he’s gonna do.</p><p> </p><p>“I mean, like, living together,” Eddie says quickly, either noticing Richie’s discomfort or maybe too wrapped up in his own, Richie can’t quite tell, “Maybe I should be, like, searching for a place of my own or whatever, but… I like living with you, man. It’s… it’s nice, y’know? It’s nice to, like… I was so lonely, Rich. Even with my wife, I was so… You know?”</p><p> </p><p>Richie smiles a little, because he’s hopeless to stop it as it stretches across his face, especially when Eddie doesn’t need directions to navigate the roads closest to the one they—<em>th</em><em>ey</em>—live on. Tentatively, he reaches a hand out and pats Eddie’s knee, feels a distinct prickling at the back of his eyes when Eddie doesn’t jump or flinch at the contact, only responds by letting out a little sigh, shoulders losing some of the tension they were holding a moment before.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, trust me, I get it,” he says, and he knows he should crack a joke, but he can’t, not right now, so he pushes forward, lets the carefully crafted filter between his brain and his mouth expand, its tight netting growing loose, little holes widening to let more through than maybe he should. “You… I was, too, man. Before you came, it was just me and that big fuckin’ house my manager pushed me into getting, y’know, for the image or whatever the fuck… I’m happy you’re here. Okay? Like, over the moon you came and you’ve stuck around and... I’m not gonna, like, beg you to stay or whatever, but I… Don’t think I want you gone, okay? I’m, like… It’s all good. Casa de Tozier is Casa de Tozier <em> and </em>Kaspbrak now. Yeah?”</p><p> </p><p>By the time he’s done tumbling through his little speech, Eddie is pulling into the driveway, smiling just a little, and Richie’s hand is still on his knee. Eddie puts the car in park, turns the key and tosses the ring to Richie, who lets it smack him in the chest and fall with a crinkle against the bag he’s still holding on his knees.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Eddie says, and he puts his hand over Richie’s and squeezes, lets their fingers knit together for just a second before he pulls away, “Alright, c’mon, I’m hungry.”</p><p> </p><p>They climb out of the car together, Eddie holding the drink and Richie still clutching the bag of food, and Richie feels butterflies with wings the size of Mothra flap around his stomach, crawl up his chest, threaten to burst free when Eddie asks him, as he unlocks the door, if they can go look at cars over the weekend since he should really get one for himself, his gas-guzzler back in New York with Myra even though she won’t drive it. Richie nods, lets Eddie talk his ear off about car shit Richie knows nothing about while they take off their shoes and plop the food down on the coffee table, turn the TV on, start watching about halfway through another episode of Wives with Knives.</p><p> </p><p>While he records Eddie’s first experience with sweet and sour sauce for posterity and laughs too loud at the way Eddie licks at his lips like a baby who doesn’t quite know if he likes pureed peas, he knows he’s fucked, but that’s not news. It also doesn’t bother him all that much.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. sunday always comes too late</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>They spend the better part of Sunday driving around to different dealerships in the area, Richie standing around as moral support while Eddie argues with salesmen that are trying to upcharge him because they don’t realize Eddie knows more about cars than he maybe looks like he does. He’s always been the resident gearhead of their little group, would spend days in the clubhouse flipping through car magazines with Ben, who was the only other one of their pals to give even a semblance of a shit about that stuff. Mike would join in, sometimes, but he’d be the first to admit that he didn’t know much beyond tractors and pick-ups. Mrs. K didn’t let Eddie get his license at sixteen, insisted he waited until he was eighteen instead, but that didn’t stop Eddie from learning how to change oil and flat tires and brake pads the second one of them had a car he could get his hands on. As it happened, Richie was the first, driving around his dad’s old beat up station wagon when Went got himself a shiny new station wagon—Wentworth Tozier was </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dad </span>
  </em>
  <span>through and through, and Richie respected that—so, Richie’s spank bank at sixteen was filled mostly with images of Eddie, sweaty enough to pull off his t-shirt, soft curls damp against his forehead as he tinkered around under the hood of Richie’s car. Something about the pristine little Kaspbrak kid covered in motor oil and grease, chest shiny with sweat over muscles just starting to develop out of baby fat that left him a little soft at the hips… well, it really got Richie’s motor running, pun intended.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The idea that maybe he’ll get to see that again, nearly two decades later, in the driveway of the house they share, is almost enough to make Richie black out in the middle of the fucking Chevy dealership. He can so perfectly see himself cracking his thick ass skull against the too-white floor and staining it with blood. The only thing that stops his knees from buckling, really, is Eddie’s shrill bitching to some poor guy trying to convince him that the gas consumption of some two-door hatchback </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t as bad as it looks on paper, Mr. Kaspbrak, I assure you</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>After they break for a late lunch at some hipster diner with overpriced sandwiches and wraps—Richie has to admit that Eddie looks like the cutest thing he’s ever seen in a NASA t-shirt he ordered with his Kohl’s Cash, jeans he cuffs at the ankle, and aviator sunglasses perched on his head while he tries to navigate a BLT wrap too big for his mouth, and if Richie surreptitiously saves the dumb picture he sends to the group chat of Eddie glaring at a bit of tomato that falls wetly from its home inside the greenish spinach wrap, well, no one needs to know—they wind up at a Volvo dealership where Eddie moons over all the hybrid options presented to them. After Facetiming with Stan, who is, as he’s always been, the group’s only source of real impulse control—when Eddie texted Ben a picture of the one he wanted, Ben offered to Venmo him whatever it cost if the price tag was what was giving him doubts, which made Richie laugh so hard he was bent in half, bracing his hands on his knees—and running some quick numbers, Eddie selects a cute little hybrid sedan, its blue paint metallic and much flashier than Richie would ever expect Eddie to pick. He makes quick work of signing the papers so he can drive it home that day, and when the keys are handed over, he grins wickedly at Richie, chirps a </span>
  <em>
    <span>race ya home, Trashmouth</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and speeds away.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>After Eddie beats him home and gloats, blissfully ignoring every time Richie reminds him that he had to walk all the way back to his car, so, Eddie absolutely cheated, they begin working on a big pot of stew for dinner, big enough that they’ll have leftovers for Eddie to take to work Tuesday for lunch, maybe Wednesday, too. They start with some no-soak lentils Eddie grabbed at Safeway, and even though he doesn’t have to, Richie calls his mom to ask her what she puts in her lentil soup. He tells himself, and tells Eddie, that it’s because she’ll be so excited to offer her two cents, especially since Richie stopped really needing cooking advice in his early twenties, but it’s actually because he misses her a little. And, with the fond look Eddie shoots him, he has a feeling he’s been found out.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Richie! What a nice surprise,” Maggie says, sounding genuinely thrilled as she picks up at the second ring. She requests Facetime instead, and when he accepts, he has to fight not to laugh at the way she squints behind her glasses, a fairly new development since Richie and his sister both got their shitty vision from his old man. “There you are! Hi, honey.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, Ma,” he says with a grin, spinning around to show Eddie, too, who is washing their lentils, “Eds is here, too.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His mother gives him a look, the same one she’s given him since he was twelve and she found a dumb poem he wrote for Eddie stuffed in the back of his sock drawer, inspired by some gooey love poem they had to read and mark up in English class. Unfortunately—fortunately? Richie isn’t so sure anymore—he was no Ben Hanscom, so that little number never saw the light of day, but the cat was out of the bag, then, and even though she never confronted him about Eddie </span>
  <em>
    <span>specifically</span>
  </em>
  <span>, they did talk about him liking boys </span>
  <em>
    <span>in general</span>
  </em>
  <span> one night at the kitchen table, which had Richie blubbering because he thought he was in big trouble but, in reality, she just hugged him, told him she’d always love him, said he could always come to her. Maggie took care of telling Went for him, and Richie, again, feared punishment, but his dad just winked at him over breakfast the next morning and said, plain as day, that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had a feeling you liked baseball for more than just batting averages</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and Richie blushed but couldn’t hold back a giggle fit that ended with him shooting milk out his nose. Maggie could never remember much about the boy who stole her kiddo’s heart during the decades the Losers spent apart, but she knew, like Richie did, that he existed somewhere in the world, and clear memories came back to her and his dad when he told them the incredibly Reader’s Digest version of what happened when he went home. Her eyes lit up when he mentioned Eddie, and as soon as he told her, the night before Eddie’s plane landed, that Eddie was moving in with him, that look came back stronger than ever.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie, for his part, just sticks his tongue out at her, which makes her grin and roll her eyes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hello, Eddie! Dad says hi, too, Rich. And to you, too, sweetie!.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi, Mrs. Tozier, Mr. Tozier,” Eddie says back, wrist deep in the colander full of lentils, trying to suss out any pebbles that have snuck into their bag in spite of the fact that Richie has never thoroughly washed lentils and, funnily enough, has never bitten into a rock.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Eddie, I’ve told you since you were </span>
  <em>
    <span>ten</span>
  </em>
  <span>—”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry, Maggie,” Eddie amends, his cheeks a little pink as he ducks his head down, “Hi to Went, too.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They talk for fifteen minutes or so, Richie meandering around the kitchen and repeating every ingredient his mother suggests, nodding when Eddie gathers everything up and starts chopping an onion, a couple sweet potatoes, and carrots. His dad throws out some ideas, too, even though everyone present knows that Wentworth isn’t much of a cook unless it involves a grill or, at the very least, red meat.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie thanks them both for their input, though, and they share </span>
  <em>
    <span>I love you</span>
  </em>
  <span>s back and forth, and Richie smiles wide when she tells Eddie she loves him, too, and he responds in kind, cheeks still a little ruddy where he’s moved on to searching the pantry for a can of sweet corn.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The soup turns out to be one of the best things they’ve made together and they both wind up going back for seconds. They listen to music again, and Eddie sends a video of Richie singing “Hungry Like the Wolf” to the group chat, and to Maggie, who responds with a cheerful </span>
  <em>
    <span>LOL, he gets his confidence from his dad</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The video features Richie swishing his hips dramatically as he portions out the leftovers into Tupperware containers and sings into the soup ladle that drips broth all over the kitchen island. He shoves at to Eddie at one point, who yelps when droplets spray him, but obediently </span>
  <em>
    <span>do do do do doo</span>
  </em>
  <span>s along, and Richie watches the video at least six times, only stops when Eddie whines and whips a rolled up wad of paper towel at his head, says he’s tired of hearing their tone-deaf wailing. He’s grinning, though, so he can’t be all that mad.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s around seven o’clock when they settle in on the couch to watch the Back to the Future trilogy. With breaks for the bathroom and for snacks, it’ll probably take them until around one-thirty to finish it, but Eddie is working from home the next day and only has one call with a client scheduled, so he’s not pressed, and if he isn’t, Richie isn’t, either. They end up stretched out on the sofa together, a couple throw blankets tossed over where their legs brush and bunch together, and it’s startlingly reminiscent of all the time they spent in the hammock together, ankles smacking and Eddie wriggling his chilly toes into the warmth he finds between Richie’s calves. A bowl of popcorn sits almost forgotten on the coffee table as Richie thinks </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll just rest my eyes for a sec</span>
  </em>
  <span> halfway through the second movie when a wave of sleepy contentment crashes over him and makes him yawn, tucking the top afghan up to his chin.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>-</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie wakes to the sun streaming in through the sliding patio door, letting out an ugly sound from his throat as his eyes snap open and, for a moment, he has no goddamn clue where he is. His eyes dart around, one hand adjusting glasses that have gone cattywampus on his nose, and he realizes, dimly, that he’s safe, he’s home, he woke up because of the sun and not because of a fuzzy memory of something that didn’t happen, didn’t happen to Eddie, </span>
  <em>
    <span>didn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>... </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He moves to sit up, but his legs are trapped beneath someone else’s, and he turns to the television, where the menu for the Back to the Future Part II DVD plays on a loop. He squints at the clock on the wall, finds that it’s a little after six-forty.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Eds…” he says, voice thick and clogged with sleep. He clears his throat, wipes a hand over his dry lips and winces when he feels the wetness of drool—</span>
  <em>
    <span>very attractive, Tozier</span>
  </em>
  <span>—pooled in the corner of his mouth and dribbled down his chin. He scrubs his knuckles over the streak of saliva, scrunches up his nose at the scratchy sound of his stubble dragging against his fingers. “Eds, hey, man, it’s… We must’a passed out, man, hey.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Eddie grunts and grumbles, cracks one eye open to give Richie a surprisingly withering glare for someone who is clearly still mostly asleep, and, with effort, shifts from where he’s curled on his side to resting on his back.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You… snore,” Eddie says, husky and sleep-addled, and Richie feels his face flush. He knows he snores, has been ribbed for it since he was in high school by anyone unlucky enough to share a room with him, but something about hearing it from Eddie is different, even though he’s pretty sure Eddie was the first person to shake him awake in the middle of the night, tell him to </span>
  <em>
    <span>roll the fuck over, it’s always worse when you sleep on your back, fuckhead</span>
  </em>
  <span>. That had to be either Eddie or Stan; Ben was too nice, Mike also snored and had no room to talk, Beverly wasn’t allowed to spend the night with them, and Richie doesn’t remember it being broken up by Bill’s stutter.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry,” he says, bashful, and he hopes he can blame it on the early hour if Eddie calls him out.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Eddie, of course, doesn’t, just squirms around until he can free his legs enough to sit up against the arm of the couch. His hair is a mess and his NASA shirt sticks to his chest with sleep sweat, and Richie balls his hands into fists to calm his damn fingers down, tell them</span>
  <em>
    <span> no, you can’t touch</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck,” Eddie says, succinct and with feeling, and then lets out a yawn so big Richie could probably see his tonsils if he squints, so he certainly doesn’t squint. “We’re too damn old for this shit.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He stands, and if Richie wasn’t already sporting morning wood—and he was, because his body is nothing if not a traitor—he certainly would be after watching Eddie stretch his arms up high, yawning again, t-shirt riding up to show off a glimpse of tanned midsection he never lets his gaze linger on too long when he sees it in the pool. Eddie had slept in jeans, they both had, but, Richie notices, Eddie’s are unbuttoned and unzipped, exposing the black waistband and very top of the lavender boxer briefs that once got mixed in with Richie’s clothes when they both did laundry on the same day. Richie knows, from snatching them up, balling them up, and throwing them onto Eddie’s bed, that they’re impossibly soft, probably micromodal because of course Eddie spends the big bucks on his undies. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The underside of Richie’s tongue floods with saliva and he digs his blunt nails into his palms because</span>
  <em>
    <span> no, you can’t fucking touch</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck, I need coffee,” Eddie says, shuffling to the kitchen like an especially adorable zombie, either blissfully unaware or blissfully nonplussed about the state of his clothes from the waist down, ruffling his fingers through messy hair that sticks up more on one side, the other matted down to his head. “You want some?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie makes a sound that doesn’t really mean anything, rewards the snake in the grass that lives between his legs with one solid press of his hand against the fly of his jeans, and swings himself up to standing, too, throwing subtlety out the window when he yanks the hem of his shirt down to cover himself a little. He follows Eddie to the kitchen, slumps against the island while Eddie fills up the coffee pot, and groans as he pushes himself towards the cabinet with sugar and Splenda.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“God, my back is fucked, I can tell,” Eddie says, grabbing their matching coffee mugs from the little hooks above the sink. He shakes in two packets of Splenda for himself, uses the little spoon they keep in the sugar bowl to dump in way too much sugar into Richie’s mug, just the way Richie likes it. If it isn’t so sweet it might decay his teeth with just a sip, he isn’t interested. “We shouldn’t do that shit again.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie just sort of hums again, ignores the disappointment he feels. He isn’t quite sure exactly what shit they shouldn’t do again, but if it ends up being their little nightly tradition, he’s not sure he’ll get over it. Not without a lot of tears and maybe a good old fashioned tantrum or two.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m serious,” Eddie says around another yawn, searching for the creamer in the refrigerator as coffee pisses steadily into the pot. He turns to Richie, still brandishing the jug of Dunkin’ Donuts vanilla, and jerks his head roughly towards the staircase. “Next time, we crash in your bed. The TV in your room is almost as big, and if we pass the fuck out, we won’t need to go to the chiropractor. Speaking of, do you have a guy? I might see if he can get me in today if this doesn’t feel better after a shower.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie just sort of stares dumbly, heart pattering away in his chest at a speed that can’t be healthy, and he very nearly asks Eddie to check his pulse, asks for a refresher on what the signs of a heart attack are. His bed? Eddie wants to… in his bed?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Here, take this,” Eddie snaps, irritated, and shoves Richie’s mug toward him, filled to the brim with coffee and creamer, so full some splashes out against the marble top of the island, “you clearly need it. I’m going to shower and find a chiropractor, my back has never hurt this bad.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. always take a big bite</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>the biggest of thanks to Leanna (@leannerd) for fielding my question of "what do I put between this part and this part?" with "hmmm, what about a picnic?" and inspiring one of the softest scenes in the whole thing. love you much, Same Brain &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Monday flies by. Eddie manages to get a chiropractor appointment after his work shift is over, since there’s a thirteen-year-old hypochondriac that still lives inside him and tells him his spine is snapped in half or whatever, but he comes home from the appointment much less cranky, so Richie doesn’t mention it. While Eddie is gone, he takes a hot bath with some epsom salt and that manages to mitigate his own back pain from unbearable to its normal level of achy. The day ends with them playing a round of Mario Party 3 when Richie digs through the attic to find his old Nintendo 64 and manages to get it set up. Richie kicks Eddie’s ass, cements himself as the champion of video games between the two of them, but Eddie holds his own and curses a blue streak every time he loses a mini game. They don't fall asleep on the couch, don't even come close, and Richie tries not to be incredibly bummed that Eddie doesn't trail after him to crash in his bed.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Tuesday also passes quickly, in spite of the fact that Eddie is away at work from eight in the morning until a little after three in the afternoon. Richie manages to write for four whole hours and takes a long nap on his narwhal—he Googled and that’s definitely what it is—in the pool as a treat, tunes blasting from his little Bluetooth speaker, and he’s woken up by cold plastic slapping him in the tits and an amused-but-concerned Eddie asking him when he </span>
  <em>
    <span>reapplied sunblock, man, do you know how fuckin’ red you are</span>
  </em>
  <span>? The answer turns out to be not very, since he actually did lather himself up before he ventured outside, but he gets a lecture about UV rays anyway. They have chicken burgers for dinner, following a recipe Eddie finds on Pinterest, and stay up until midnight playing another round of Mario Party before Eddie goes to bed to prepare for another work day at the office.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>On Wednesday, at about ten after twelve, Richie’s phone buzzes with an incoming call, and he puts down his mug of leftover lentil soup to grab it. Eddie’s name flashes, and he worries, for a second, that something is wrong, that Eddie’s in trouble, but he pushes those thoughts away and slides his finger across the screen to answer.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Eds?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, Rich!” Eddie answers, sounding damn near chipper, much more awake than when Richie saw him off with a hug—and a honey bun and a travel mug of English Breakfast tea because he’s a fucking sap and a loser and so in love it hurts—and Richie lets himself exhale quietly, any residual nerves leaving through the sigh he pushes out through the gap in his teeth. “Do you have any plans today? Like, this afternoon? When I’m done with work?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie knows that Eddie knows the answer to the question before he asks—since Bill is still gone with Mike, currently hiking somewhere in the Carolinas or the Dakotas, somewhere with a north and a south, Richie only really has plans with Eddie and, on rare occasion, his manager, who he doesn’t have a meeting with until the following Tuesday, and that’s just over the phone—but he humors Eddie, humming to himself and muttering something about checking his nonexistent datebook, which has Eddie huffing a quiet chuckle in his ear. It’s tinny and crackly, but the sound of it still makes Richie’s arms break out in goosebumps.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, well, there’s dinner with the president, but that can be moved—”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Fucker, I know you’re free, I was just asking to be nice.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” Richie laughs, scooping another bite of his lunch into his mouth and swallowing it down, “Yeah, dude, I’m free. Why? Got some kinda adventure planned?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Something like that,” Eddie agrees, sounding far too pleased with how cryptic he’s being, “Be ready for, like, three-fifteen. I’ll pick you up.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And Richie’s dumb heart feels like it grows wings, soars up to his throat and batters its way out into the world through a nervous little laugh that he tries to cover with a rough cough.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You good?” Eddie asks, sounding a tad worried, and Richie’s chest feels so warm he thinks he might be running a temperature.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah, just… Swallowed wrong, y’know,” Richie rushes out, shaking his head, “That sounds good, though. Three-fifteen. Should I bring anything?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Nope,” Eddie says, pops the plosive sharply, “Just wear something… I dunno, jeans or something, yeah? See ya then, Rich.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie blinks, says, “See you then, Skeds," as Eddie clicks off. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>-</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie works himself into something damn close to a frenzy over the following few hours. He showers, even though he already showered before lunch, and shaves, shaky hands clutching the razor, and he nicks himself for the first time in, like, actual years, but that might be a little more to do with the fact that he doesn't exactly shave with any real regularity, just lops off the whiskers when they get long enough to really itch. As he presses toilet paper to his cheek, he glares at his reflection with the same sort of vague destain he wore when he cut himself up when he first started shaving at fourteen. Half the time, he'd leave his bathroom looking like he got into a fight with a weed wacker and lost miserably, and he realized that was because he tried to shave without his glasses on, trusting his squint and literal blind luck to get him through. Now, he knows better, especially after putting together that his dad shaved with his specs on, too.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He texts a few dumb memes to the group chat and supplies appropriate eggplant emojis when Mike sends a couple cute pictures of Bill atop a mountain with a backpack almost bigger than him and a backwards baseball cap on his head. He and Ben swap a few more memes, and Ben's are more cute than funny or cutting, but that's par for the course. Then, he texts Beverly pictures of eight or nine different Hawaiian shirt and t-shirt combinations before he thinks better of it, takes her response—a picture of Pam from The Office with </span>
  <em>
    <span>they're the same picture</span>
  </em>
  <span> as the caption—in stride by sending her a beautifully framed photo of his middle finger. When she asks him what he's getting dolled up for, he skirts the question with another meme because, like, </span>
  <em>
    <span>good one, Bevvy, I dunno either</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and turns his phone on Do Not Disturb.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Really, he doesn't know why he's so freaked. It's just Eddie, and… That's it, actually. That's the problem. It's Eddie, calling from work during his lunch break while he's sitting at his desk with a picture of the two of them, eating leftovers they made together, maybe counting down the hours until he gets to come home to their house, and he sounds bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and he's asking if Richie is free for the afternoon and politely telling him to not dress like a slob and this feels a lot like a date, doesn't it? It does. And that's the problem. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Because Richie knows that's not what it is, no matter how badly he wants it to be. Eddie is his best friend, Eddie stays up late watching old sitcoms with him, Eddie laughs when Richie calls a cheerful </span>
  <em>
    <span>Norm!</span>
  </em>
  <span> when Eddie walks in the front door because they binged like six episodes of Cheers the night before, Eddie shares midnight snacks with him, Eddie whips his ass at Boggle, Eddie… is the love of his sad, sorry life.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It's overwhelming. That's all. And it sucks, just a little, but in the best way, too, just like every time he the voice in his head shrieks </span>
  <em>
    <span>hey, yeah, you're in love, but he isn't, shithead, get it together!</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>So, after pacing enough that he's a little worried Eddie will clock the tread in the carpet, he finally settles on what he wants to wear—blue jeans, a shirt with Sylvester the Cat and Tweey on it, a Hawaiian shirt covered in tiny sunflowers, and his new Nikes, and it doesn’t match, but when does he ever?—and paces a little more. He grabs his phone again and texts Stan, who eases his nerves with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>you'll be fine, he's probably not taking you to be committed if he told you to wear jeans</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he sits to play Mario Kart, letting himself scream at the top of his lungs when he only manages to get fourth in the Flow Cup Grand Prix like some kind of amateur.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Eddie shoots him a text that he's on his way home, Richie has worked himself into such an anxious mess that he's cycled all the way around to calm again, but his leg is bouncing like a motherfucker, so maybe that's not entirely true. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie is out the door the minute Eddie honks from the driveway, and when he sees the bright grin Eddie tosses his way as he walks to the passenger door, he swears he feels so light he could be swept away by the barely-there breeze ruffling the leaves on the trees that line the border of their—</span>
  <em>
    <span>their</span>
  </em>
  <span>—yard. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Heyo, Sketti-O," he greets as he slides into the passenger seat, sounding much calmer than he feels as he takes a deep breath of new-car smell tinted with the fruity air freshener stick Eddie jammed into one of the dashboard vents. He looks over at Eddie and can't help but smile when he notices that Eddie's not dressed in what he wore to work—black slacks and a salmon colored button-up, Richie remembers, and he looked adorable—and is instead sporting something more casual, wearing khaki shorts and a short-sleeved mint green polo. "You makin' a day of taking me to get spayed or something?" </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Eddie rolls his eyes, more fond than annoyed even though God knows he won't admit that for love nor money, and backs out of the driveway with one arm slung around the back of Richie's headrest, and maybe Richie died in his sleep weeks ago and this is his afterlife, given to him by a sadistic god who releases how fucked his life was and thinks he deserves a little more heartache after he beefs it, too.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Or something," Eddie says, jerking his right thumb away from where it grips the steering wheel to indicate the backseat, "I thought you'd laugh if I told you, and I didn't wanna have to kick your ass, so…" </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie looks behind them and finds a big wicker basket with a red checkered—or is it gingham? Richie doesn’t know, but it’s picnic-patterned—blanket next to it. He turns back to Eddie, nervous nausea replaced by a warm sweetness spreading through him like molasses pouring out of his heart and coating his insides in something sticky and cloying, but a delicacy nonetheless. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Eddie, are we going on a picnic?" he asks, and he knows he sounds way too jazzed about it, but Eddie laughs at the puppy-dog excited tone of his voice. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"I, uh, found a spot driving home from the chiropractor," Eddie says, swinging a sharp left, "I only drove by, y'know, but it kinda reminded me of the quarry a little? And you, y'know, keep telling me to celebrate shit, and I closed a deal with that overseas corporation today with Chuck, the guy with the Frenchie I told you about, so, I figured, you know, why not? I borrowed the basket from Carol at work and ordered a couple sandwiches from the deli close to the office and it's not weird, right? I just thought—"</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"No, Eds, no, it's perfect, it's great, I love a picnic!" Richie interrupts his favorite motormouth—and idly wonders how the hell Eddie ever really thought he had asthma when he could fit full paragraphs into the space of a sentence, words all rushed together and damn near impossible to decipher if you weren't practiced in the art of the wild Kaspbrak—not wanting Eddie to even have the chance to finish the thought, to speak any strangeness into existence. "I think I know the place you're talking about, too. Big lake cut into a grassy hill? I think it's part of the park, technically, but it might be its own thing, I dunno."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Eddie nods, smiling again, maybe still smiling from before, and lets out a tiny breath he'd been holding, apparently, and says, "That's it, yeah." </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They grow quiet then, taking in the scenery when Eddie turns right, goes another mile or so, and then turns left into the park entrance. He's got an easy-listening station playing softly on the radio, which Richie will absolutely mock him for later, but there's something very fitting about Karen Carpenter's smooth voice telling them she's </span>
  <em>
    <span>on the top of the world, lookin’ down on creation</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Richie feels like he is, too, and even though he spent actual hours working his stomach into knots, actually being with Eddie always manages to untie the impressive trucker's hitches in his tummy.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Eddie parks the car after they drive through the park and wind up on the opposite side of the entrance, and he grabs the picnic basket and blanket, tosses Richie a pristine Frisby that had to have been purchased for just this little outing in mind, and they walk the short distance between the parking lot and the water. There are rocks against the edge and a pier juts out a good ten feet into the murky blue, but they settle in the warm grass next to a tall tree, shaking the blanket out. Eddie pulls out a whole feast for them—turkey and cheddar for himself and ham and Swiss for Richie, a couple little bags of Funyuns, two waters, two Pepsis, and a little plastic container of cherries—and tosses Richie his own Bluetooth speaker, apparently pilfered before Eddie left for work that morning.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"You're a thief, Kaspbrak!" Richie accuses with a delighted laugh, flicking the speaker on and grabbing up his phone to connect it, opening Spotify once the little blue light on the speaker confirms that the device is paired. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"I was hoping if we had music, you'd shut your mouth long enough for this to be relaxing," Eddie gripes back, rolling his eyes again as he carefully peels back the plastic wrap on his sandwich, "but, sadly, seems like I was wrong." </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Richie laughs again, bubbly and happy, really </span>
  <em>
    <span>happy</span>
  </em>
  <span>, damn, happier than he ought to be, surely, and puts on his newest playlist, one he's been crafting since Eddie started rattling off songs he remembered Richie putting on mixtapes he'd leave in Eddie's locker for him to listen to on his Walkman, to bring along when they'd go driving around town just for the hell of it, when they'd go to the park and Richie would secretly teach Eddie how to drive better than Mrs. K ever did. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Spaghetti Kaspbrak and Trashmouth Tozier Take Over the World</span>
  </em>
  <span> is what he calls the playlist, remembers writing that in his spiky chicken scratch onto a cassette label back in the day, and when he puts it on shuffle and Blind Melon's "No Rain" starts to play, he's transported back to tearing it up on the air guitar, belting out </span>
  <em>
    <span>so stay with me and I'll have it made</span>
  </em>
  <span> as Eddie screamed at him to </span>
  <em>
    <span>put your hands back on the goddamn wheel, do you want to get us fucking killed? </span>
  </em>
  <span>while they inched along the all but abandoned road in front of the Tozier house at two in the morning just because they could.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They eat and lounge on the blanket, and even though Richie's back protests, he wouldn't dream of popping this little bubble they've created, so he winds up leaning into the tree trunk a little for support. Eddie tells him a funny story about some coding mix-up at work—he thinks it's funny, anyway, and calls Richie an asshole </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> a dickhead when Richie kind of just blinks—and Richie runs a few jokes by Eddie that have been tossing themselves around in his brain for a couple days but he can't get quite right. They workshop a little, and he laughs when Eddie tells him he expects a cut from his next show since half the jokes are about him, and Eddie lets out a disgusted sound and tells him to </span>
  <em>
    <span>keep your big yap closed when y’got Funyun mush all over your tongue, sicko</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Richie tries to tie a cherry stem in his mouth just to prove that he's still got it—he doesn't, actually, and maybe he never had it and is getting himself mixed up with someone else, easy mistake—and almost chokes on the pointy little bastard, then shoves Eddie hard when he manages to make it look easy, slathering his hands in lemony hand sanitizer after he flicks the knotted stem at Richie. Richie is left to desperately not think about the implications of that, but, well, that goes about as well as not thinking about Eddie always does. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They get up to toss the Frisby around, trying to outdo each other with trick shots, and Richie topples over in shock when he tries to fling it under his leg and it whaps him in the back of his knee. Eddie laughs so hard there are tears in his eyes and he shakes his dumb sunglasses right off their perch on his forehead, so Richie, moving faster than either probably thinks he can, snatches them up and they play a wonderfully familiar game of </span>
  <em>
    <span>hey, motherfucker, that's mine, gimme</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh, sorry, cant'cha reach, shortstack?</span>
  </em>
  <span> that ends with Eddie stamping down hard on Richie's foot and yanking the glasses back out of Richie's hand as he hops around and yells loud enough to scare a few birds. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>By the time they're finishing up, the sun is hanging low over the water, not quite ready to set but still blazing a brilliant orange-yellow that tints the sky just a little, and they take a selfie with the lake as their backdrop, and Richie is full tilt in love worse than he's ever been, and it's fucking worth it, completely worth it if he gets to see the way Eddie's lips curl up as he tries not to smile when Richie calls him </span>
  <em>
    <span>cute, cute, cute</span>
  </em>
  <span> in the group chat after their friends—especially, he notices, Bev and Stan, though Ben and Mike and Bill's responses are nothing to sneeze at—over the picture of them.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Even if his fingers ache a little in the realization that they can't hold Eddie's, swing their hands between them as they walk back to the car, it's worth it, because he'll take Eddie in any capacity he can have him, and he'd have to be a lot stupider than he is to risk ruining how goddamn good he has it because he's too greedy and can't keep his mouth shut.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I got halfway through titling these chapters and realized how few words are actually in this song that aren't just Robert Smith listing the days of the week whoops</p>
<p>ALSO here's a shameless self promo for a sticker I designed on redbubble based on the patch that I made that inspired the title of the mixtape Richie talks about:<br/>https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Spaghetti-and-Trashmouth-Take-Over-the-World-by-summercarntspel/53150422.EJUG5</p>
<p>I have other IT stuff up on there, too, if you'd like to peruse!! &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. you can fall apart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>strap in my pals, we got a long 'un ahead</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Richie almost gives up on hoping and praying Eddie will make good on his idea of them hanging out in his bed to avoid falling asleep on the sofa, but right when he’s about to catapult the thought deep into his mind to only be ruminated on when he’s feeling particularly down, Eddie, like always, manages to catch with him his guard down.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On Friday, after a dinner of shepherd’s pie that Eddie slaves over and refuses to let Richie help with, they’re both stuffed to the gills with potatoes and ground turkey and a flaky crust Eddie is so proud of he brags about it in the group chat, and Richie can tell, as they slump on the sofa watching some ghost hunting show Eddie is adorably into, that even at barely nine o’clock, they’re both flagging. Eddie changed from work attire into a pair of red running shorts and a t-shirt with Iron Man on the front, really driving home the fact that's he still the same little twerp that Richie fell for decades ago, and Richie's been schlepping around the house in a pair of flannel pajama pants that are floods in the least flattering way and a cozy sweatshirt, and since they fell asleep in fucking jeans last time, there's no doubt that they'll nod off in comfier clothes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With a long sigh, Eddie presses his hands to the coffee table and stands up, turning off the TV before he faces Richie and yawns, head tossed back to expose the lines of his throat, and Richie swears his heart is playing leapfrog with his tongue when Eddie meets his eyes and smiles, soft and sleepy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You changed your sheets this week, right?” is all Eddie says, then he’s turning to walk towards the kitchen and into the hall. It takes until he’s nearly to the staircase for Richie to catch on and get to his feet to follow. “Because I definitely washed, like, four sets on Wednesday, so there’s no excuse for you to have not changed them by now.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"You're supposed to change sheets?" Richie asks as they climb the stairs, Eddie a couple steps ahead of him, and grins like a moron when Eddie grunts like he's both horrified and not impressed with the, admittingly, easy joke. When they reach the landing, Eddie lets Richie go first down the hall, and he opens the door to his bedroom while tugging playfully at the collar of his shirt and shooting Eddie a toothy grimace, nose scrunched up. "Bad news, Spaghedward." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The truth is that he changed his sheets while Eddie was at work on Thursday, topped them with a freshly-washed duvet that he grabbed out of the dryer right after lunch because, really, it had been too long since he washed it, and that’s a big score that will maybe earn him a couple points with Eddie. On top of that, he managed, through some kinda divine intervention, to have the motivation to make his bed that morning, too, so his mattress isn't a mess of pillows and blankets and bottom sheets peeling off the corners, coaxed out of position from the way he rolls around in his sleep. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I have very little problem believing you held that exact mindset when you first moved out on your own," Eddie says as he unceremoniously flops down onto Richie's mattress, stretches to twist the little knob that turns on Richie's bedside lamp, lights up the room in a filmy off-white, and even though he's absolutely right and Richie could probably have counted the number of times he changed his sheets while he was dorming in college on his fingers—with a couple to spare, let’s be honest—he's not gonna say it. He doesn't have to; Eddie knows him too damn well. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>For a long moment, Eddie sort of just lounges there against the pillows, laying claim over the right side of the bed, then thumps his hand against the spot beside him. "You coming or not, asshole? I wanna finish that episode of Ghost Adventures. I think they're gonna catch some good shit in that freaky storm cellar." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Thanks for the invitation into my own bed," Richie grumbles, but there's no heat behind his words as he knees his way onto the mattress and plops beside Eddie. He tosses him the remote from where it's laying on the left nightstand, stretches out to cross his legs at the ankle, back against the pillows. "You micromanage everyone you share a Serta with? No wonder your marriage fell apart, man, orgasms are a give and take deal."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That, too, is an easy joke, appropriately gross and dumb for Richie's usual taste, but something hot licks low in his belly as he says it, and he feels what appears to be a little fire starting there when Eddie just chuckles and rolls his eyes, smirking down at the remote in his hands. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"You and I both know damn well this is a Casper you got on the cheap with some podcast discount count." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Going through my search history now, too, Eds?"</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Don't need to. You're too predictable, Rich." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Richie wants to snap back, he really does, wants to be pissy or, at the very least, do something that'll surprise Eddie, throw him off his rhythm and off his stupid high horse, but when he opens his mouth, unsure of what might fall out, a little voice inside his head, one that sounds a lot like his own whiny, bratty one from about three decades before, give or take, whispers </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe being predictable isn't such an awful thing if Eddie's doing the predicting</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he closes his mouth so hard and fast he feels his teeth click.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie, unaware or unphased—that's really becoming the age-old question, famed in song and story—selects Hulu from the list of apps presented when he turns the TV on and resumes their episode, which plays for all of ten seconds before it cuts to a commercial. As he settles back against the pillows, too, mirroring Richie's position in a way that's probably subconscious but warms Richie's heart anyway—makes him wish he could see what they look like, wish he had a mirror on the wall opposite his bed like he did when he was a kid; Eddie used to catch him staring at their reflections all the time and was convinced Richie was a massive narcissist for a bit—Eddie flicks his gaze from the screen to Richie's eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"We should'a brought snacks up," he says, sounding too whingy and petulant for a man in his fucking forties, and he scowls, lines creasing his forehead and around his mouth, when Richie barks out a laugh. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"How the fuck can you be hungry after the amount of pie you put away?" Richie asks, even as he turns to open the little door at the bottom of the nightstand closest to him and root around for the box he knows is there, was put there the day after Eddie first mentioned taking their little parties up to his room. After some digging, Richie's fingers find what they're searching for and he tugs out a blue box of Chicken in a Biskit, and tosses it to Eddie, who rips it open without wasting a single second. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Jesus, Eds, no foreplay?" Richie scoffs, and yeah, okay, he really needs to stop joking about sex when they're on his fucking bed, but the hour is late and old tricks are all this dog has.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"You've been holding out on me and you know these are my fucking favorite," Eddie grouches back, tearing open the little bag inside the box and yanking out a fistful of crackers for himself before he nudges the box to rest in the—very, very small, if you ask Richie, especially considering they’re working with a fucking king mattress—space between them on the bed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I don't know where you fuckin' put it all," Richie mutters grumpily, thinking dark thoughts about how every carbohydrate he consumes goes straight to his love handles even as he plucks out two crackers for himself, "Your appetite puts mine to shame, man." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"One, that's not true," Eddie says around a mouthful of crackers, and it's gross and wonderful and makes him puff his cheeks out like he always does when he literally bites off more than he can chew, and, incidentally, he's right and Richie knows it, because they've matched each other, just about, fry for fry, bite for bite, sip for sip since they were kids and Eddie would scream at Richie for eating too fast. Eddie sticks one finger up to tick off </span>
  <em>
    <span>one</span>
  </em>
  <span>, then a second as he continues, "two, it's not my fault I have a fast metabolism and, you have, like, five inches on m—</span>
  <em>
    <span>don't you fucking say it!" </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie lets his head thunk back against the headboard as he cackles with reckless abandon. "I didn't say anything!" he insists, holding his hands up in surrender. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"You were thinking it," Eddie accuses, pointing both fingers at Richie's chest in a way that he probably thinks is threatening but misses the mark by a country mile, "I could fucking tell." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Rolling onto his side, Richie cradles his head in his palm, elbow braced on the mattress. "Do you think Napoleon projected this much? Is that part of it?" </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie whips a cracker at him, which he deserves, and it bounces off his forehead, which he also deserves, but now he's got more of their snack, so, who's the real winner? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Three," Eddie glares, third finger coming up in such a swift motion it looks like it might hurt. He turns back to the television, uses his free hand to snag up two more crackers, shoves them in his mouth before he grabs the remote to up the volume. "I have very regular bowel movements."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie sits in stunned silence for a second, rolls the words over in his head, and then he's laughing so hard he can't catch his breath. He coughs, sitting up again, and Eddie pats his back as he starts laughing, too. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Arms up, Rich, c'mon, that's the trick!" </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Raising his arms, Richie coughs again, feels how red his face is getting, and shakes his head at such a dizzying speed his glasses almost fling off. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Congrats, Spaghetti-O," he giggles, like a fucking child, because that's what he is, that's what they both are, and then he yanks the box of crackers up so he can dig out another handful because the salty little fuckers are addictive, he'd bet money on it. "Mrs. K would be prouder of that than your MBA." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Thanks," Eddie says, smug and proud, though whether that's because he made Richie laugh or because he's thrilled about the efficiency of his digestive system, Richie doesn't know, "I could give you some tips." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I'm grateful, Eds, really, but I haven't needed help shitting since I was four." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A quirked brow and a knowing look get tossed at him in front of God and Zak fucking Bagans and Richie relents, smacking Eddie's shoulder.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"O-</span>
  <em>
    <span>kay</span>
  </em>
  <span>, four and a half!"</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That sets Eddie off again, but he calms down faster, shushes Richie, who </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn't fucking talking, thank you</span>
  </em>
  <span>, when the dudes on screen think they hear a woman wailing or a toddler singing Pink Floyd lyrics backwards or something, and the moment passes, but the aching tenderness, the familiarity, the </span>
  <em>
    <span>love</span>
  </em>
  <span> stays, and Richie imagines it cocooning around them like a well-worn scarf, soft and cherished.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When the episode finishes, Eddie pauses at the credits, offers to run downstairs to fill up their water bottles, and when he comes back, he looks to Richie for an answer to the question he leaves unspoken and gets a nod with an air of </span>
  <em>
    <span>why not</span>
  </em>
  <span> in response. He backs out to the show menu again and searches for an episode he hasn't seen as he takes a sip—the little plastic straws on both of their Camelbacks sound like a dolphin when water is pulled through them and Richie has just about mastered an impression of the dumb noise, which he treats Eddie to every time he hears it—humming softly to himself when he finds one he thinks is suitable and starts it up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"S'cold in here," Eddie says while the ghost dudes talk to some poor bastard who's being haunted by some dead soldier and his equally dead children. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"You're always cold," Richie reminds him, no bite to his voice even though it's true—Eddie's had crap circulation for as long as Richie has known him—and he shimmies a little until he can pull down the covers they're laying atop. He slides underneath, rearranging the pillows so he's comfy, then removes a hand from the little burrito he's making to gesture for Eddie to do the same. "C'mon, I can't hear the dead kid voices over your teeth chattering." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie huffs like he's offended, but then he levels Richie with a surprisingly even look that Richie wishes he could decipher, but knows, even if it isn't conscious knowledge, that if he can't, Eddie must not want him to. "You don't mind?" </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie trills his lips, says, "Psh, me? Mind? Get that juicy ass and those frozen tootsies under here, Spaghetti!" even though he's very aware that he should mind, should very much mind, if not for Eddie's sake than for his own. His poor heart can't take much more of this and he knows that, but damn does it feel good, and at least he'll go out doing what he loves best: loving Eddie Kaspbrak so fiercely that the sheer force of it exceeds any boundaries known to any man and any man's god.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And if Richie has to blink hard to avoid tearing up like the hopeless sap he is when Eddie crawls under the covers with him, draws his strong legs up so he can torment Richie with his cold toes, still freezing even through his black no-shows, Eddie is too distracted by the EVP monitor going haywire on screen to see him, so it doesn't fucking count. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Grey water. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He smells grey water and wet rock, a combination that makes him gag so hard it hurts in his throat and his guts, as his eyes flutter and his back screams at him, jagged edges of uneven ground digging in hard enough to bruise and tear his skin through his shirt. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He looks up, focuses on the fuzzy and familiar blob kneeling over him, hears Eddie's voice from far away, </span>
  <em>
    <span>hey buddy, there he is, hey, we killed It, I think I got It, Rich, hey—</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Blood. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He smells, tastes blood, metallic and horrible and it isn't even his, is pouring out of Eddie, is pouring out too fast, and Eddie is shrieking, wailing, shaky hands pressing to the wound, and Beverly screams somewhere too close and miles away and Richie gags again, wetter this time, feels bile burn his tonsils as he watches the light slowly flicker out of Eddie's eyes before he's yanked away and thrown against a far wall, crumbles to the floor in a broken heap and then Richie is hollering and screaming too, and his throat hurts with it, congested with more bile and vomit, but he can't hear it, can't hear the sound he knows he's making, and he scrambles to his feet and everything is dark and he can't find Eddie or the others and he doesn't know where he is and that fucking voice laughs maniacally and reminds him that it knows his secret, </span>
  <em>
    <span>dirty little secret, I know your secret, your dirty little</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Richie</span>
  </em>
  <span>! Richie, hey, buddy, hey." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie’s eyes wretch themselves open as a painful gasp rips through him and he’s sitting up, pawing at the blankets and at his own chest while it heaves in time with the whistling breaths escaping his nose. He looks around, frantic, and finds himself in his own bedroom, the TV playing that goddamn fucking ghost hunting show at a low volume. He can feel how wet with sweat he is and he shivers hard, having kicked off the blankets, ankles twisted up in the sheets, and he winces when he realizes he’s soaked through his sweatshirt and his pajama pants. He fears that he maybe he broke his streak for not pissing the bed like a fucking child.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Eddie says, and Richie realizes that he’s there and jumps a mile, neck popping with just how fast he turns his head to make sure it’s really Eddie and not the clown or the werewolf or the fucking flute bitch Stan always saw.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie clicks his tongue and starts moving his hand in slow circles over Richie’s shoulder blade, and Richie is calmed, a little, by the motion of it, but is also horrified that Eddie is feeling how fucking damp his shirt is, must feel the way the soft cotton has turned nasty and slimy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, hey, no, it’s just me,” Eddie whispers, so quiet Richie can barely hear him, and he feels the tears starting, fresh ones since there are already wet tracks down his cheeks and neck, when Eddie thumbs at the collar of his shirt, “it’s just me. You okay? I’m sorry I didn’t wake you sooner, I… You were already pretty deep into it when I woke up, I must’ve really zonked out, man, I don’t know, but… you didn’t wanna wake up, you really fought me, so I… Are you okay? You… You kept saying my name and you </span>
  <em>
    <span>yelled</span>
  </em>
  <span> it, Rich, and… do you wanna talk about it?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then Richie's really crying, breaking down with big wet sobs and curling into a miserable ball, lower back and tailbone screaming when he drags his knees up to hug them to his chest, burying his face, one shaking hand raking through his tangled hair and tugging way too hard at a knot. He hasn’t cried like this in… Well, he’s cried like this embarrassingly recently, actually, but he hasn’t let anyone actually see him cry like this since they were back in Derry, and he wouldn’t have let anyone see him then if he could have helped it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, Richie,” Eddie says, sounding heartbroken himself, sounding so much like how Richie's mom sounded when she comforted him after a silly injury made him snivel and whimper like a baby well past the age where it was cute, and Richie just fucking whines into his knees as Eddie shuffles around until he can set two strong hands on Richie’s shoulders, deft fingers digging into the hard, tense muscles there, “it’s okay. It was just a dream. I know it scared you, I know, but it… it isn’t real, okay? It didn’t happen that way. I’m right here. I'm right here, and you're right here, and our friends are all okay. We're safe, Richie, all of us.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie knows what he dreams about because all of them know. They wouldn’t, if Richie had any control over it, but he shot himself in the damn foot by getting crawl-up-the-stairs drunk the night they got back to the townhouse, clown dead and clothes still smelling like quarry water, and everyone lost their minds for a couple hours, soaked and pickled them in brandy, vodka, whatever else they could find at the unsupervised bar. Ben mixed together about six different things and slammed the concoction in three big gulps before he rinsed and repeated, Bev drank from a cup she’d also ashed into and flipped Eddie the bird when he tried to tell her, Bill and Mike passed a bottle of apple brandy back and forth, giving each other tender looks that should have made it clear that what happened between them in the following months was an inevitability, just like so many other things in their lives together. Even Stan, the most put-together out of the whole gang that night, was stumbling as he sipped at his Jack and Coke—which was, for the record, a Beam and Sam’s Cola—and offered more hugs and back pats than he’d probably given out through their entire childhoods, calling his wife to tell her he loved her at least six separate times over the course of the evening. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie was easily the worst offender of the bunch, crushing at least half a bottle of Evan Williams all by himself and chain-smoking like he hadn’t since he was in college and nicotine was the only way to get his hands to stop shaking on bad nights when dreams of home, fuzzy and out of focus, made him wake up craving the touch of some mysterious boy with soft curls and a foul mouth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That’s how he wound up, at some point well past dark, with his cheek resting against the cool wooden top of the bar, crying, lit cigarette clamped between his teeth in spite of the fact that Eddie, plastered after far fewer shots than it took anyone else to get there, kept shouting about how he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>gonna set the whole goddamn place on fire, idiot! </span>
  </em>
  <span>He started blabbing about what he saw in the Deadlights then, which prompted a lot of hugs and kisses to the crown of his head and echoed agreements of how awful it was to be caught in them from Bev and Stan. They all huddled together, leaning on each other and the barstools, and Richie thinks he blew his nose on the tail of someone’s shirt, but that’s about when his memory gives way and the next thing he knows for sure is that he woke up the next morning with a hell of a hangover and a video Bill sent to the newly-created group chat of Richie on all fours, scuttling down the hall outside their bedrooms, obviously recovered from his little sobbing session enough to scream-sing something that might have been “Send in the Clowns” in a very shitty Frank Sinatra Voice until Mike threw a shoe at him from the doorway of Bill’s room, which should have also said something about the two of them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie hasn’t talked about it since then. He knows he should, has had Bev and Stan both offer dozens of times, telling him that talking to each other has really made it easier, but something about the idea of acknowledging it makes it feel too real, makes it feel like it’s a thing that could happen, and he can’t stomach that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, he doesn’t talk about it, not when they offered and not now. Instead, he cries until he’s cried out, cries until his head is pounding and his ribs and lungs hurt with the painful way he drags in breaths, and Eddie stays with him the whole time, rubs his shoulders and pets his hair and, when Richie finally lets himself uncurl a little, he’s immediately being dragged into Eddie’s arms, Eddie’s hand on the back of his head guiding his face into Eddie’s shoulder, nose brushing against Eddie’s neck, and that would make him cry harder if he could, but he doesn’t have the energy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he can catch his breath, he pulls away enough to drag the back of his hand over his nose, pushes his knuckles into his eyes, and he lets out a shaky, and, frankly, fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>embarrassing</span>
  </em>
  <span> whimper when Eddie shoves a couple tissues at him and hushes him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“W-where are my glasses?” Richie croaks, unsettled when he realizes they’re not on his face. He’s vulnerable enough at the moment, with his tears and snot drying on the sleeve of Eddie’s t-shirt, and not being able to see clearly is making panic start to zap through him as he sits up against the pillows.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Here, you… you fell asleep first, so I took ‘em off,” Eddie murmurs—if Richie’s brain was online, he’d revel in the fact that Eddie seemingly slept in his bed knowingly, willingly, but, as it stands, his brain is little more than mashed potatoes in his skull, thick and lumpy and clueless, so he’ll stick a pin in that so he can obsess over it later—and then he’s unfolding the plastic legs and gently pushing them onto Richie’s nose, expertly hooking them over his ears just like he used to when Richie would get himself in trouble with Bowers and his goons and Eddie would have to tend his wounds in the school bathroom, disinfect his busted lip and check the swelling of his black eye or bruised cheekbone. Eddie would always slide his glasses back on with more accuracy than Richie thought fair, thumbing the bridge until the little plastic grips found the near-permanent dents on the sides of Richie’s nose. He does the same thing now, and Richie can see, through the tears still making his eyes glassy, that Eddie is smiling sadly at him. “I didn’t want you to, like, smash ‘em and get glass in your eye or some shit.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie laughs, wet and shaky, and jams the tissue he’s still holding up under his lenses to dry his eyes. He could say that he falls asleep with his glasses on all the time and the worst that’s happened is waking up with a pink line dug into his temple from one of the legs, but he just nods instead, lets Eddie and his overactive mind have the win this time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You gonna hurl?” Eddie asks, tone too tender to match the words, and Richie sighs a little when Eddie’s hand returns to his shoulder, thumb tracing circles on the bump where his collar bone connects to it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie thinks about it for a second—he almost always has to at least dry-heave after a nightmare and he wouldn’t be surprised if the chicken crackers tried to come back up—and shakes his head. He feels nauseated, but it’s not nearly as bad as it usually is.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Okay, good,” Eddie nods, wise and solemn, and he pats Richie’s shoulder once before he goes to stand up. He must hear the tight, worried sound Richie makes, though, because his hand is back a second later, reaching to grab Richie’s and tug him along, too. “Let’s go brush our teeth, okay?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Confused, but unwilling to let Eddie out of his sight even for the dentist-recommended two minutes of brushing, Richie nods and follows. He expects Eddie to drop his hand once they’re both up, but he doesn’t, just winds their fingers together as he uses his other hand to search the bottom of the TV for the power button on their way out the door. The hallway is dark, which freaks Richie out a little, and he realizes his toothbrush is, of course, in his bathroom, but he’s still too out of it, thinks maybe he’s missing something and doesn’t want to seem dumb, so he just lets Eddie pull him into his room and into the smaller ensuite attached to it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Squeezing Richie’s hand once, twice, Eddie unlocks their fingers and starts digging through the top drawer until he pulls out a spare toothbrush, white and purple with medium bristles, according to the little label at the top, and hands the package over.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You probably need to change your brush, anyway,” Eddie muses, smiling a little as he grabs his electric toothbrush, its handle a metallic green that shines in the harsh fluorescent light that comes from a line of bulbs screwed into the top of the mirror, and wets it under the faucet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why?” Eddie repeats, applying a dollop of toothpaste onto his brush and blinking at Richie’s reflection in the mirror. He’s being gentle, treating Richie with kid gloves, and Richie can tell because he doesn’t tack on something too mean or cutting to the end of his explanation. He isn’t sure if he’s grateful, or if he just wants Eddie to treat him normally. “You should change it, like, every three months. Do you know what kinda </span>
  <em>
    <span>germs</span>
  </em>
  <span> live on—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No,” Richie stops him and shakes his head, pulling a little desperately at the cardboard and plastic until it gives and he can yank the brush out. He wets it, because he doesn’t know what the fuck else to do, and accepts the tube of toothpaste when it’s passed to him, squeezes a little line out. “Why are we… doing this?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie pauses with his brush halfway to his mouth, thumb resting over the little button that’ll flick it on, and he sighs minutely, so small that Richie wouldn’t notice, probably, if he wasn’t in the business of noticing each and every thing about Eddie Kaspbrak. Hell, he’s the CEO and founder and employee of the month.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It helps,” Eddie says, like a promise, and he locks his eyes on Richie’s in the mirror again, looking serious but not angry, no furrow between his brows as his big, doe browns meet Richie’s tired blues, refusing to let go once they have a hold. “It… After a nightmare, y’know, I always brush my teeth. It helps me get back to sleep, like a fresh start for the night. And we didn’t brush before bed, anyway, and your dad would beat both our asses if he knew we weren’t taking good care of our teeth.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie cracks a smile at that, knows Eddie is right about his dad and thinks his little ritual makes good sense, actually, even though it’s a little troubling that Eddie has to have a nightmare ritual in the first place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And,” Eddie lays a hand flat on the white sink counter, swallows at nothing while Richie tracks the bob and return of his Adam’s apple, “I can… check, if I come in here. I can make sure there’s not a, y’know, crazed jackass ready to stab me in the face.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The buzzing of Eddie’s toothbrush starts and he shoves it into his mouth, effectively shutting down their conversation for the next couple minutes, so Richie starts aggressively rubbing the bristles over his molars and lets his eyes unfocus and stare into the mirror, locking on a discolored spot in a shower tile he sees reflected in the glass, and he brushes. His brain is mush, still sleepy and fried and fucking freaked out, so it’s no use to try and make use of this time to ponder the wonders of the universe or yearn to touch the silvery line of Eddie’s cheek scar or the pinkish one that Richie knows is on his hip from when they’d rolled and crashed away from the claw that could have—</span>
  <em>
    <span>didn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>could have</span>
  </em>
  <span>—skewered Eddie like he was nothing but a hunk of meat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie uses the buzzing to time his brushing—usually, he hums “All Shook Up” with some extra dramatic pelvis wiggling, but he holds off—and keeps running the bristles over his tongue so he can let Eddie spit first when the mechanical whirring stops. Eddie swishes with water from a Dixie cup he fills, pours mouthwash in, and swishes again, and Richie follows suit with his own Dixie cup when it’s offered because, again, he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to do. He feels a little like a robot or something, copying everything Eddie does, but Eddie doesn’t seem to mind nearly as much as he did when, as kids, Richie or Bill would hit him with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>hey, Eddie, wanna play shadow?</span>
  </em>
  <span> and he'd fire back with </span>
  <em>
    <span>no, I hate shadow</span>
  </em>
  <span> only to have a smirking, bratty butthead parrot </span>
  <em>
    <span>no, I hate shadow</span>
  </em>
  <span> back at him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They leave the bathroom after Eddie tosses both of their little cups into the trash can, and Eddie bends to flip on his bedside lamp, then turns back to Richie.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You wanna sleep in here or go back to your room?” he asks, like that’s a normal fucking question, like it’s as simple as </span>
  <em>
    <span>do you want chicken tacos for dinner or chicken alfredo, we have broccoli so maybe we should do the alfredo but I don’t really care</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and then he tsks softly, says, “We should… you should at least change clothes, I think. It’ll make you feel better.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah…” Richie agrees, because the damp fabric is sticking to him in about a half-dozen super uncomfortable places and his skin feels itchy just thinking about letting it dry all the way, “I, uh, should change…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie must hear the hesitation in his voice—it’s clear and pathetic to his own ears, so he’s sure Eddie’s best friend senses are tingling, wonders if Stan will wake up knowing something’s wrong like they've some sort of freaky alien shared brain shit, and, honestly, that wouldn't be the strangest thing about their little party of seven—because he smiles in a way that’s comforting and would be condescending, maybe, if Richie didn’t know that the intentions and the care behind it come from a place of love and not a place of being on the higher ground. A hand closes around his, Eddie’s fingers slotting between his own again, and after the lamp is turned back off, he’s being led to his room once more.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ll be right outside the door,” Eddie tells him as Richie roots through his drawers for fresh clothes—boxers and gym shorts and a t-shirt because he really is drenched in sweat and he knows he won’t feel comfortable if he doesn’t trade everything out—and balls up what he needs in his hands, twisting the material between his fingers. “Why don’t you get in the shower and wash off real fast, too?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What, you tryin’ to tell me I reek?” Richie asks, bundle of clothes under one arm. He lifts the other and turns his head to sniff, facing screwing up at the sour, sweaty smell that smacks him in the face. “Okay, yeah, I see your point.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie lets out a puff of air through his nose and shakes his head, fond, hands on his hips. He nods to Richie’s bathroom door, then sits on the very corner of the bed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ll be right out here,” he repeats, slowly, like he’s trying to drive the point home, trying to reassure Richie that things are okay, that he’s safe and Richie’s safe and they, together, are </span>
  <em>
    <span>safe</span>
  </em>
  <span>, “Okay, stinky?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Mm, don’t tell Stan you’ve stolen his favorite nickname and given it to me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Stan has never once liked being called that, so I’d hardly say it’s his favorite.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well, who am I to question you on hating nicknames, Eds?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Get in the shower, dumbass, we gotta get back to bed.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie goes without any more stalling—he doesn’t know, really, if he’s stalling because he’s afraid to lose sight of Eddie or if he’s stalling because his eyes are getting heavy and he just wants to go back to sleep—and shuts the bathroom door behind himself with a soft click. As he puts the fresh clothes on the sink counter, he hears the fizzle of the TV clicking on again, the soft noise of the channels changing, and then there’s a surge of canned laughter while he hears Alan Alda's voice, Hawkeye screaming about wanting </span>
  <em>
    <span>something else</span>
  </em>
  <span> in a first-season episode of M*A*S*H. He smiles to himself, can picture the scene so clearly, and hears a stifled chuckle from Eddie right after the splat of goop on the mess tent tray hits the canvas tent, and he feels his chest, previously filled with cobwebs and muck, lighten just a little.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He starts the shower before he strips down, gets the water hot enough to steam, condensation sticking to the mirror and starting to fog it as he peelings off his shirt, then yanks down his pants and boxers in one go, dropping them to the floor to be dealt with later. He removes his glasses and carefully makes his way over the lip of the bathtub—he’s stubbed his toes way too many times on it, so he’s laughably cautious about it now—and tugs the shower curtain closed. More worried about efficiency and speed than about relishing in how good the hot water feels on his muscles, sore from thrashing around and tensing up for so long, he stands under the spray and lets the water mat his hair to his head, breathes out hard through his nose as it streams over his face, sticks to his eyelashes, catches in the stubble on his cheeks and upper lip. He reaches blindly for his half-used bar of Dove—it’s the same shit he’s used since he was a kid; he hasn’t found another that doesn’t make his skin feel tight and itchy and dry—and soaps up, the suds washed away almost faster than they appear. He’s thorough, but he’s quick, very familiar with having to shower and be out the door in five minutes or less, and doesn’t bother shampooing because, knowing Eddie, he’ll be goaded into showering again as soon as he wakes up, and his hair is already thinner than it has ever been, so he’s not taking his fucking chances. With his luck, a crash-zoomed picture of his fucking bald spot will be on some shitty gossip site next time he’s caught in public. When he’s squeaky clean and, he has to admit, feeling a lot better, he steps out of the tub just as carefully as he stepped in, and he grabs a fluffy blue towel to dry off before he slips into fresh clothes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he steps back into his bedroom, steam billows out from the open door, and he sees Eddie, still in roughly the same place, but standing now, fighting a fitted sheet over the corner of the mattress, the ones they’d fallen asleep on tossed haphazardly into his hamper.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Put your gross clothes in the laundry basket,” Eddie demands, snapping the sheet into place and pointing at the sleeve of Richie’s sweatshirt still on the floor, visible from where he’s standing, “I’m not your mother.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s very, very bold of you to assume,” Richie grunts, bending in half to grab everything up and toss the wad of still-damp clothing into the basket, “that Maggie ever picked up my fucking clothes.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, because I always did,” Eddie rolls his eyes, fanning out the top sheet and tucking the bottom edge down between the mattress and the wooden slat at the bottom of the bed frame. “You didn’t know how to do laundry until you were sixteen and you left your shit all over the floor, clean and dirty in the same fucking pile, Pigpen.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie blinks, trying to process the rapid-fire words that sounded like they were meant to be insulting. He gives up after about two seconds, though, switches the subject. “You changed the sheets.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well done, Sherlock, what’s your next deduction?” Eddie snarks, tugging up the top edge of the sheet until it lays flat just under the pillows.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why, my dear Watson, it’s elementary,” Richie responds in a smooth, practiced posh accent, much better than his British Guy Voice ever gets, and he ignores the look of shock Eddie shoots him—he’s gotta keep some tricks secret, after all. “Why the maid routine? Should I check Amazon for a cute little outfit?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t gonna sleep in your sweat puddle, dude.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie shakes the duvet, which was mostly spared since Richie kicked it off, and Richie grabs the side closest to him, helping Eddie spread it over the top of the bed. He notices, as Eddie smooths out a crease, that Eddie swapped the pillowcases, too, so everything matches, which is more effort than Richie put in when he made the damn bed in the first place. His head spins, just a little, when he realizes what exactly it is that Eddie’s saying: he’s bunking with him knowingly, willingy, for the second time in the course of one night, even after Richie woke him up by, no doubt, crying for him in his sleep.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How’d you know where they were?” Richie asks, because that's all he can say that won't devolve into a confession of gratitude, confusion, love.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>predictable</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Eddie huffs a laugh, crawls under the covers without another word, and blinks up at Richie until Richie acquiesces and joins him, “You keep them where you kept them in your closet back in Derry. Like, </span>
  <em>
    <span>exactly </span>
  </em>
  <span>the same spot.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie offers no further response, so they just kind of lay there, absently watching the television as Trapper sweet-talks a woman over the phone into picking up ribs and shipping them from Chicago to Korea. When the show goes to commercial, Eddie rolls onto his side and fixes Richie with a look that’s a mix of soft and concerned, and that’s familiar, Richie’s seen it a million times, but he has to bite off a gasp anyway. He’ll blame it on being tired if he’s caught, but he isn’t going to be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You okay?” Eddie asks instead, sincere and quiet, “That was… a rough one.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie nods tightly and takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it escape slowly between his lips. It was, but he doesn’t feel so bad now, really, and kind of just wants to sleep.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Good. I’m glad you’re, uh, okay.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You get them, too.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Huh?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You get them. Nightmares,” Richie says, lolling his head to the side on the pillow so he can stare at Eddie, gives into the urge to look into Eddie’s eyes because he’s hopeless and stupid, “You have… you have a-a </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing </span>
  </em>
  <span>for what you do when you have them.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie shrugs like it doesn’t matter, but it fucking does, and Richie is sure that his opinion on that is written all over his face because Eddie backs down with a soft hum.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not as bad as that,” Eddie admits, shaking his head, “and not… Not so much anymore. I did a lot in… Back before I moved in, you know. But it’s a lot better now. And I was never… you know, caught. In them. So mine are just… run of the mill scary shit. The leper, the clown, Bowers getting me in more than just... the cheek.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie nods. He wants to press, wants Eddie to know that he can talk about them if he needs to, wants Eddie to know that he understands and that it fucking blows, that it’s a kick in the nuts to be so goddamn scared when they’re officially the age of the big, strong grown-ups they trusted most when they were kids, but he’s so goddamn tired, so he hopes he conveys all of that with a couple slow blinks and, because he’s bold when he’s not firing on all cylinders, apparently, a hand coming up to rest over top of Eddie’s for a moment before he pulls it away and shoves it up under his pillow.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Here, stupid, you’re gonna fall asleep with these on again,” Eddie admonishes, cool fingers grazing Richie’s wet hair as he removes his glasses, folds the legs in, and stretches to set them on the side table with the lamp, the one on the right side—</span>
  <em>
    <span>Eddie's side</span>
  </em>
  <span>—of the bed. A second later, he snuggles down, too, and Richie feels the bed dip with the way he pulls his legs up to get comfortable. “You want the light on or off? And the TV?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie’s so tired, so unbelievably tired, so tired he feels it in his bones, and he’s nodding off, but he manages to mutter, “TV on… light off… thanks, Eds.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie stretches across Richie to twist the knob on the lamp and the room goes dark apart from the TV screen, which provides plenty of light on its own, and he settles down into his pillow.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“G’night, Rich.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Night, Eds,” Richie slurs, digging his cheek into his pillow, “sorry if’a snore… Thanks for… mmpf.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The sounds Richie finally goes under hearing is Eddie’s soft puff of air, not quite a laugh but not quite not, and he feels a foot, cold inside its sock, brush against his own as his mind and body both give in.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>this is a clip of the M*A*S*H moment Eddie laughs at while Richie showers:<br/>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TYlr3Tc4j8</p><p>also the nightmare/memory of the cistern may not be word-perfect because I will not watch that scene for love nor money thank you</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. you can never get enough//enough of this stuff</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>listen, we all knew where this was going (except for maybe Richie, but he's dumb, so) and it's time for it to pay off, my buds</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It, like fucking everything else, becomes a </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing </span>
  </em>
  <span>after that night. In fact, it’s so much of a thing that it puts their other things to shame.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie sleeps on the right side of Richie’s bed every night that weekend, even Sunday since he doesn’t have to go into the office. At least, that’s what Richie assumes until Monday night rolls around and Eddie snuggles down next to him, sleepily tells Richie to </span>
  <em>
    <span>set an alarm for six-thirty tomorrow, please, I left my phone on the table</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and Richie is so fucking dumbstruck by what his life has become that he just does it, punches it into his phone. It wakes them both the next day, and while Eddie goes to his bathroom to shower, Richie stumbles down the steps to make a pot of coffee and a pan of scrambled eggs for Eddie to eat before he heads to work.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie hugs him goodbye, and Eddie’s fingers slide through the back of his hair to tug him down, and Eddie’s lips brush against his forehead, mumble something about wanting takeout for dinner and </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t take the salmon out of the freezer, we’ll have it tomorrow, text me at lunch to discuss and I’ll pick up something on the way home</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and then he’s out the fucking door like any of this is fucking normal, like this is just what they do now, like every time they touch Richie’s skin doesn’t feel like it’s on fucking fire.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, so he just… does. He exists, he texts Eddie dumb shit while he’s supposed to be writing—they play a two-hour game where they send too-close, out of focus pictures of things around the house and office back and forth and have to guess what they’re looking at; Eddie gloats when he correctly guesses that a picture of what looks like a blueish smudge is Tucan Sam’s thumb on a box of Froot Loops Richie eats by the handful as he listens to his manager talk about comedy clubs and tour dates and </span>
  <em>
    <span>when are you gonna be ready to get back out there, Rich?</span>
  </em>
  <span> over the phone—and he pretends like things aren’t weird, even though they are, because Eddie is pretending they aren’t weird, so what choice does he have, exactly?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The days go by. They get through almost a whole season of Ghost Adventures over dinners of pizza and salmon and lasagna that Richie only makes to prove his point that </span>
  <em>
    <span>ricotta is better than cottage cheese no matter what the fucking Pinterest recipe says, Eddie, do you want me to call my mom and have her tell you the same fucking thing?</span>
  </em>
  <span>—Eddie winds up agreeing, but only after he makes Richie suffer through thirty minutes of him not saying a damn thing while they eat it, just humming like he’s inspecting each bite—and watch Bob’s Burgers while they eat store-bought banana pudding with vanilla wafers in Richie’s bed. On Friday, they change the sheets together, and Richie does a load of laundry that winds up being a mix of both his and Eddie’s stuff because Eddie’s been throwing socks and pairs of jeans and shit into Richie’s hamper. Richie wakes up more than once—upwards of four times, if he’s counting, which he is, because there’s no way to fucking not—in a very compromising position, cuddled up too close to Eddie, Eddie’s head on his chest or his arm slung around Eddie’s waist. He remembers waking up in these same positions a lot when they’d share the bed as teenagers, and his stomach still knots up in the same way, heart still thumps too loud when Eddie finally opens his eyes and doesn’t move away for what might be seconds but feels like an eternity.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s a problem. He knows it’s a problem, has told Stan it’s a problem, has yelled when Stan said it wasn’t a problem and he’s just </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking stupid, open your eyes, Richie, you’re wasting money on those fucking glasses since you’re blind anyway</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It’s a problem and it’s going to blow up, he knows it is, and things </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>going to come to a head—it’s a matter of </span>
  <em>
    <span>when</span>
  </em>
  <span>, not </span>
  <em>
    <span>if</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When </span>
  </em>
  <span>turns out to be Saturday.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They go for groceries in the morning at both Sam’s Club and Safeway, and they stop at Walgreens so Eddie can grab his prescription—he’s made big strides, but he still needs his Zoloft, and Richie doesn’t judge because he’d be up a creek without his Lexapro, so—before they grab lunch from Which Wich so Eddie can get a salad and act like he’s being healthy. When they get home, Eddie says he’s going to take his yoga mat outside, but thinks better of it when he remembers how fucking stifling it is under the hot sun that’s right overhead, so he winds up pushing the coffee table out of the way and setting up in the living room before he stalks off to get changed. He walks past Richie, who’s on the sofa, trying to beat his personal best on his PC’s solitaire app, in a pair of exceptionally loud yoga pants—he snaps that they were a gift from Bev when he catches Richie looking at him, but the obnoxious pattern isn’t exactly why Richie’s looking, if you can believe it—and a heather gray a-shirt that shows off his gorgeous, deceptively hunky arms.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You wanna join me?” Eddie calls as he fills his water bottle at the refrigerator, “I have a second mat and know some good stretches for your lower back.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie vetoes that </span>
  <em>
    <span>fast</span>
  </em>
  <span>, laughs, says he wouldn’t look nearly as good as Eddie does in lycra, and when Eddie comes back into the room and starts to say that </span>
  <em>
    <span>lycra isn’t a requirement, shithead</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Richie hightails it to the kitchen so he can putter around and pretend to clean, pretend to organize something, pretend to do anything convincing as long as he doesn’t have to sit there and very pointedly </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>watch the way Eddie’s muscles flex as he does his cobra and child’s pose and bridge and all the shit Richie has seen him execute flawlessly when he sneaks peeks if he happens to be outside on the patio when Eddie’s contorting himself around in the grass.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He winds up rearranging their Tupperware cabinet, even though Eddie has a system they’ve both been following, so it doesn’t actually need to be touched. Halfway through the process of unstacking and restacking lids, he starts humming “Take Me Home, Country Roads” because it’s been stuck in his head after hearing it playing at Walgreens, and mumble-sings the chorus when he gets to it. He doesn’t think Eddie can hear him, but he gets an enthusiastic </span>
  <em>
    <span>WEST VIRGINIA</span>
  </em>
  <span> shouted back at him when he reaches </span>
  <em>
    <span>to the place I belong</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and when he pokes his head around the corner, he finds a grinning Eddie staring up at him from where he’s on the ground in a plank that he’s holding without even shaking, what the </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and Richie laughs hard and loud and from his belly because nothing makes fucking sense and if he doesn’t laugh, he will absolutely cry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That night, after they eat leftover lasagna and play a couple rounds of Cards Against Humanity on that phone app with the other five—Ben winds up winning twice in a row because he’s much nastier when he doesn’t have to say the shit aloud, it turns out, and Richie sends a video to the groupchat of Eddie screaming </span>
  <em>
    <span>I hate this fucking family!</span>
  </em>
  <span> and throwing his phone across the room when Ben answers </span>
  <em>
    <span>If God didn’t want us to enjoy </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>_____</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>, he wouldn’t have given us </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>_____</span>
  </em>
  <span> with </span>
  <em>
    <span>a bleached asshole</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Mr. Clean, right behind you</span>
  </em>
  <span>—while they finish a bottle of white wine they opened over dinner the day before, they retire to Richie’s room. Eddie’s in the mood to watch a movie but doesn’t know what to pick—which is a blessing, actually, since Richie has a gut feeling he’d pick something lame—so, while he goes to his room to change into pajamas, Richie finds what he figures is a shitty b-list horror movie on some obscure upper-level television channel. He doesn’t recognize the title, but he knows some of the names on the cast list and the description makes it sound just bad enough to be funny, so he goes for it and sets it up before he, too, changes into something more comfortable for bed. Eddie comes back with a box of Sour Patch Kids and a silly grin as he shakes them, and Richie rewinds the movie so they can start from the beginning, and they settle in on the bed side-by-side.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The movie has no business being as goddamn scary as it is. It’s not the worst thing Richie’s seen, not by a longshot, but it’s got gore that’s just a little off from being convincing, which makes it freakier because then it’s bordering on uncanny territory, and jumpscares, and shitty organ music that makes everything seem way more intense than maybe it should be. If he was alone, Richie would be fine clutching his pillow and peeking at the screen over the top edge of it—or, more likely, he’d just change the damn channel—but he isn’t alone and he doesn’t want to be a wimp, which, okay, compared to Eddie, he’s handling this like a champ, but still.</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>And, on the subject of Eddie, he’s all up in Richie’s bubble from the first splatter of fake blood, which isn’t surprising, since Eddie was never one for horror movies no matter how much he claimed he </span><em><span>can handle them just fine, fuck you</span></em><span>! When they were kids, Eddie would wind up in Richie’s or Bill’s lap, screaming about how </span><em><span>watching movies is</span></em> <em><span>supposed to be fun</span></em><span>, and the few times they’ve watched thrillers down in the living room, Eddie scooted close enough for their thighs to brush and, though he’ll never admit it, turned his head to bury his face in Richie’s bicep a time or two. </span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Right now, twenty minutes in, as the movie continues playing even though Richie has offered, like he always does when Eddie gets spooked, to turn it off and find something else, the lamp is on, the sour candy is forgotten, and Richie and Eddie are properly snuggling under the covers. It had started with Eddie just curling up at his side, but then, after another jumpscare, Richie’s arms are being tugged on until they’re wound tight around Eddie and Eddie is shifting until he’s almost sitting on Richie’s lap.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Richie says automatically, giving Eddie a little squeeze, “Like I said, we can turn—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, I’m fine,” Eddie snaps back, sounding, in Richie’s opinion, far from fine, “I’m not a fucking child.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know, Eds, but—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, shut up, we’re watching this fucking movie and then we’re gonna watch something nice afterwards so I don’t dream of these fuckin’ demon thingies, okay? Okay.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie doesn’t answer, just squeezes Eddie a little tighter because he knows that Eddie doesn’t want him to say anything, just wants him to drop it, and, for once, he doesn’t push, doesn’t needle, doesn’t crack a dumb joke at Eddie’s expense. Maybe Eddie’s grateful and maybe he isn’t, Richie doesn’t really know, but Eddie does lean heavier into him, so, either way, Richie’ll take it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Blood and guts start leaking out of some poor dude—he’s a detective or something, Richie thinks, but, to be fair, he hasn’t been paying a whole hell of a lot of attention since Eddie’s been all up in his space, so maybe the detective is already dead and this is his buddy from the beginning—and Eddie lets out a sharp little yelp and turns to hide his face in Richie’s neck, breaths puffing out harshly against Richie’s throat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jesus Christ,” Eddie pants, fingers gripping hard at the wrist Richie has over his waist, “I fucking… Jesus </span>
  <em>
    <span>Christ</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay, Eds, I got’cha,” Richie says back, knows it sounds placating, but it actually makes Eddie physically relax a little, Richie can feel it, so he’s hopeful that it does some good, “I got you. Always, Eds. I won’t let the bad guys anywhere near you, I promise. Never again.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s sincere and far too real, especially considering that Richie is stone sober—they both are, the effects of the wine gone before they were even really noticeable—but it’s true. Richie knows it, and when Eddie’s head lifts up so their eyes can lock, he knows that Eddie knows it, too.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie’s gaze keeps his own stuck, glued there, and then Eddie’s eyes flicker down to Richie’s lips and Richie notices, Richie sees the movement and tracks it, mirrors it, looks at the soft dip of Eddie’s cupid’s bow and then back up at his big eyes and then there’s a pair of lips slotting against his and he doesn’t see a damn thing else because his eyes flutter closed on their own accord.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re kissing. They’re kissing, really kissing, Eddie’s mouth sliding against his with purpose, with intent, and it’s just closed lips pressing together, locking so that Eddie’s top one winds up pressing into the seam of Richie’s, but Richie’s head spins, body thrums, passion and light seeping into his veins, spreading through his entire body.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It doesn't last more than a few seconds, which isn't nearly long enough given the years, the </span>
  <em>
    <span>decades</span>
  </em>
  <span> of fucking history and tension and pathetic goddamn pining behind it, and Richie hears a whiny noise when Eddie pulls away, and he has a sinking feeling, considering the way he chases after Eddie's mouth even after their lips disconnect with a soft sound, that the noise is coming from his own throat, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie pulls back just far enough that that can lock eyes again, and Richie feels his mouth go dry when he sees something unfamiliar in Eddie's dark eyes, something that looks like hunger, like want, like maybe he wants to—</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Eddie," Richie hears himself say, and he wonders when he's going to regain control of the sounds that keep leaving his him since his vocal cords are going fucking rogue, apparently. "I…" </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Later</span>
  </em>
  <span>," Eddie responds, swears, giving Richie a tight little nod before he's leaning back in and then Eddie's kissing him again and all bets are fucking off.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This kiss is less tame from the moment their lips slant together, and if Richie is thinking about all the shit they're going to need to talk about at some point—he is, too, because, sure, he’s down for playing tonsil hockey with his life-long crush just as much as the next schmuck, but he's also, as established, a card-carrying sap—all of those little questions marks in his head fizzle away into nothing the second Eddie starts chewing on his bottom lip, slides the wet tip of his tongue into Richie's mouth, and holy </span>
  <em>
    <span>Moses</span>
  </em>
  <span>, for as disgusted as Eddie was over the concept of Frenching when they were teenagers lying about getting to second base with girls that wouldn't even let them buy tickets to the fucking ballgame, he's got a fair amount of tricks up his sleeve and his technique is a force to be reckoned with. Richie wants to ask him who he practiced on, but his mouth is a little preoccupied with the way Eddie’s tongue scrapes against the crooked edge of his front teeth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Before Richie can fully comprehend what's happening, his tongue is working, too, jammed down Eddie's throat, making a frankly disgusting sound as it tangles with Eddie's own in either a fight for dominance or a delicate dance where they both get the satisfaction of leading, and the covers are kicked off the bed and onto the floor, and they're both lying on their sides, and Eddie's fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>leg</span>
  </em>
  <span> is slung up over his hip, Eddie's pointed toes colder than usual since his feet are bare as he drags the rough-from-running pad of the big one up Richie's calf, bunching up his dumb fuckin' Yoshi-patterned pajama pants in the process. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie's theory about dying sometime recently is becoming more and more plausible with every passing moment, but now he’s thinking that maybe he was a good enough person that the deity in charge is giving him a little treat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After minutes of increasingly filthy kisses—Richie thinks Eddie might be trying to lick his tonsils and is tempted to remind Eddie that he had them removed when he was seventeen after getting strep too many times; Eddie knows, though, because Eddie brought him a whole gallon of strawberry ice cream when he got home and proceeded to eat  half of it himself while they read comics, then blamed Richie when he got a bellyache—and hands in hair, on necks, drifting down over chests and tickling at flanks, Richie can't take it anymore, all of his patience zapped and replaced by a need so forceful that it makes him feel damn near feral.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Eddie</span>
  </em>
  <span>," he croaks as he breaks the kiss, and he can hear how husky and wrecked his voice is already, and that kind of spurs him on in a weird way, but he's mostly spurred on by Eddie's answering gasp, a breath sucked in through lips shiny and reddened. Richie dips his head, presses an open-mouthed kiss with too much tongue to Eddie's neck, pulse fluttering hummingbird fast under him, and then he's rolling over on top of Eddie, bracing himself up on his arms, and Eddie stares up at him with a mix of affection and awe that is so textbook accurate for all of Richie's wet dreams that it doesn't seem fair, actually.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Richie," Eddie says back, sounding just as broken, just as cracked wide open and overflowing with lust, want, </span>
  <em>
    <span>love</span>
  </em>
  <span> as Richie feels, and he licks his lips, sucks the lower one between his teeth and gives this little shake of his head like he's afraid he's done something wrong, and fuck if Richie's brain doesn't scream that he's gotta prove that just the opposite is true. "I…" </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Shhh," Richie whispers, feeling more confident now, maybe more confident than he should given the fact that he really doesn't have a clue what's going on, exactly, but he won't let that stop him, not when he's in the position to make the terrified little thirteen year old that bent a house key so bad it didn't turn in the lock anymore by scraping shaky, spiky letters into a free spot on a bridge known for sucking face finally feel fucking vindicated. He looks down at Eddie's big eyes, really lets himself get lost for a moment or ten inside them, sees all the things he feels his chest ache with shining back at him because he finally knows to </span>
  <em>
    <span>look</span>
  </em>
  <span>, finally knows he's </span>
  <em>
    <span>allowed</span>
  </em>
  <span> to look, to see, to </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span>. His own eyes prick with tears, but that doesn't deter him, either, especially when Eddie's hands come up to fist at the back of his shirt, twisting up the threadbare fabric as his fingers dig into the forever-tense spot between Richie's shoulder blades.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Rhomboid</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Richie thinks, lowering himself down so he can start peppering kisses all over Eddie's face, down the curve of his chin, under the hinge of his jaw and down his neck, </span>
  <em>
    <span>or maybe trapezius</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that's the muscle Eddie's jamming his thumbs into as he hisses out a breath through his teeth. In college, Richie tore one of them doing a particularly stupid and ill-advised trust fall during an improv night on campus. He'd fallen on his ass and fanned his arms out too wide as he thunked against the stage, and he felt the sting right away. The campus doctor, a mousy little guy who came once a week to diagnose STDs and tell you to </span>
  <em>
    <span>get to the ER, why the hell'd you wait for me?</span>
  </em>
  <span>, mostly, couldn't quite tell which muscle was actually torn with his lackluster little prods, and Richie didn't give enough of a shit about the details to go get a once-over at the hospital, so he wore the sling and did the recommended PT and never bothered finding out. It still aches sometimes, even all these years later, and Eddie has somehow found the exact spot where it always hurts the most and is dutifully rubbing it while Richie assaults his neck. </span>
</p><p> </p><p><span>Speaking of, Richie seals his lips over a patch of skin just to the left of Eddie's Adam's apple, then he releases with a wet little bit </span><em><span>smack</span></em><span> to ask, "Can I leave a mark?" because apparently this is the fucking ninth grade Christmas dance and they're off breaking the arms-length rule in some corner while the chaperones are distracted by some half-drunk junior with his tie wrapped around his forehead who thinks he can fucking breakdance successfully on the slippery gymnasium floor. Richie can taste</span> <span>the </span><em><span>can you hide it from your mom?</span></em><span> tacked on as a silent end to his question, but he doesn't say it because for once, Richie would like to </span><em><span>not</span></em><span> have Eddie associate his libido with his dead fucking mother.</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie pants out a stutter of approval, not quite the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>yes</span>
  </em>
  <span> but a definite </span>
  <em>
    <span>uh-huh</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and Richie nips at the wet spot again, suckling on it until he feels it grow warmer as blood rushes to the surface, vessels breaking, and he takes care to be sure that it's bruising nicely before he drags his tongue to the other side of Eddie throat to start working on another.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"O-oh, God," Eddie squawks, and his hips push up, </span>
  <em>
    <span>up </span>
  </em>
  <span>until they bump into Richie's, and Richie isn't positive, but he's pretty sure he feels the shape of Eddie's dick, twitching as it hardens, through a couple measly layers of soft fabric that separates it from his own as it fills out, fattens up fast because this </span>
  <em>
    <span>Eddie</span>
  </em>
  <span> and this is </span>
  <em>
    <span>happening</span>
  </em>
  <span>, holy shit, and his fucking head might as well just explode now, actually, because it'll save time. "I… </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that feels good, ah…"</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie preens just a little, because as embarrassingly limited as his experience in this department actually is—and trust him, it is, no matter what he tells the world, and yeah, he was a little wilder in his younger days, but nowhere near as daring or bold or </span>
  <em>
    <span>straight </span>
  </em>
  <span>as he pretends to be under the hot lights of the stage—he knows how to use his mouth. Trashmouth has a whole host of meanings, and he's proud of every single one, especially because most of the time, at least one of the meanings is making Eddie yell. He’s tickled pink at the prospect of finding out which others do the same.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Never gotten a hickey from a pro before, stud?" he teases, and the nerves he hadn't noticed were building up inside him start to drain away again because teasing, joking, pushing buttons is familiar territory, makes everything feel a little more normal even though the world has started spinning in a different direction, fast enough to toss him clear off the surface if he doesn't find a foothold to cling to. He drags his nose over Eddie's wobbling Adam's apple, resumes the line of kisses he's dropping to every spot he can reach. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"N-never had a </span>
  <em>
    <span>hickey</span>
  </em>
  <span> before, actually," Eddie corrects, breathless, and Richie shudders when he feels Eddie's hands slowly walk down his back until his hips are being gripped, thumbs and ring fingers digging hard into his love handles under the hem of his t-shirt. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Richie is fucking flummoxed for a second, doesn't have a clue to to reply to that because any combination of words isn't going to cut the fucking mustard for describing the rush he gets at the mere implication of being Eddie's first </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie, of course, takes the comically bugged-eyed look Richie is positive he's wearing as his cue to accept the proverbial baton and start his lap of this little relay. He uses all the strength hidden in his tight little core, stacked with muscles that ripple underneath his dumb polos and stiff button-ups and dry-fight t-shirts to twist hard to the left, rolling them over until he’s got the upper hand—literally, since Richie finds his wrists pinned to the pillow on either side of his head, </span>
  <em>
    <span>what the fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>—and can straddle Richie’s lap fully, knees spread on either side of Richie’s lower waist so he can plop his butt down on Richie’s tummy like he was born to sit there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now, this position has infiltrated Richie’s head from the time he saw some very heterosexual couple wind up in a similar one during a movie he shouldn’t have been watching, shouldn’t have been awake for and downstairs at all during, especially not with his big nose inches away from the TV screen, eyes huge and thrilled behind his glasses because </span>
  <em>
    <span>holy shit, are these people having sex? On </span>
  </em>
  <span>TV</span>
  <em>
    <span>?</span>
  </em>
  <span>—to be clear, they absolutely weren’t, but to a dopey eleven-year-old who was lying through his overbite when he claimed to kiss some girl at the vacation Bible school he went to over the summer in Hampden with his cousins on his dad’s side, a little heavy petting might as well have been full-on porn—and it was incredibly confusing to think about doing that someday and instead of picturing some girl on top, picturing Eddie. There’s always been something inexplicably hot about Eddie being in charge somehow, bossing him around or beating his scrawny ass when they wrestled in the Denbrough backyard. It’s true, too, that this position is also now a cornerstone of his worst and freakiest nightmares, but maybe there’s something to reclaiming it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Richie thinks about all of this, really, he does, but then Eddie’s fucking gnawing on his neck like a man possessed and it’s kind of hard to focus on waxing poetic.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie groans, a low </span>
  <em>
    <span>ung </span>
  </em>
  <span>punched out from so deep down inside him it feels like it comes from his toes, and tips his head back, and he manages to wriggle his arms free from Eddie’s grasp so that he can finally get his hands on Eddie’s ass. He fans out his fingers, cups a cheek in each palm, and when Eddie fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>grinds </span>
  </em>
  <span>back into the feeling, he is suddenly embarrassingly close to coming in his pants, dick woefully neglected, like some virgin kid on prom night.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I-I,” Richie tries, swallowing with a dry click as Eddie’s mouth starts depositing these feathery kisses over his collar bones, tongue swiping at the sparse hairs on his chest that come up nearly high enough reach the dip in his throat, “Eddie, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Eds</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you k-keep that up and we’re… I’m…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie hums against his skin, then he pulls back, but Richie realizes that Eddie’s not as concerned with </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> as he is with scrabbling for the remote, pointing it to the television that is, oh yeah, still playing that fucking movie, and when it snaps to black, Eddie tosses the remote onto the floor and looks down at him, eyes a little wild and a lot hazy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m not getting off with washed-up child actors screaming in the background,” Eddie says, wiggling his hips a little to push back against the hands Richie’s still got on his ass, “I’ll develop a complex.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie stares up at him, goldfish-brained because, to be honest, there’s very little blood up there now with the way it rushed in great big rivers down to his dick, and he squints when Eddie makes a face, scrunching his nose up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I… sorry,” Eddie whispers, sucking his lip between his teeth again, “I shouldn’t, like, you know, assume we’re gonna—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Eddie,” Richie interrupts, and he hears how low and husky his voice is, has been, and he makes a lovely mental note on the Post-It pad in his mind to explore—</span>
  <em>
    <span>exploit</span>
  </em>
  <span>—the way it makes Eddie’s eyes flutter. He squeezes Eddie’s ass twice, two quick gropes, and he swallows the saliva that’s threatening to drown him where he lies before he says, “Please. Assume we’re gonna.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Eddie, with the same determined expression he used to wear when he’d kick ass on Ms. Pacman, the only cabinet game he was really good at—had to be Ms. Pacman, too, not the original—arches his back in a way that lets him rub himself against Richie’s ribs with a quick roll of his hips. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How do you want me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie very nearly says </span>
  <em>
    <span>let me count the ways</span>
  </em>
  <span>, very nearly starts yammering about every single sexual fantasy he’s ever had—he can’t recall a single one that doesn’t involve Eddie, because even the mystery-man in his mind's eye during their time apart was Eddie, couldn't have been anyone else—very nearly starts to cry because, again, this is happening, this is his life, this is real and happening and his life, </span>
  <em>
    <span>what the fucking shit</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but he manages to keep it together with a slow intake of breath that he holds, exhales. He flexes his fingers again, takes in the gorgeous sight of Eddie squirming at the feeling of Richie’s thumbs petting the dimples just above his ass, and, after some quick pondering, he breathes, “Can I… I wanna blow you.” with as much bravado as he can fake, hoping Eddie doesn't realize—or maybe realize and not care—that he's been thinking about this moment since he learned that </span>
  <em>
    <span>suck my dick</span>
  </em>
  <span> wasn't just a thing to yell at someone you were mad at.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie is quick to nod, apparently ready to indulge Richie in whatever he suggests, which is a heady thought, goddamn, and quicker still to change positions. He flops down next to Richie and unceremoniously tugs off his t-shirt—he grips it from the back of the next and peels it off, which shouldn’t be so sexy to Richie, but it fucking is anyway—and shimmies out of his shorts, leaving him in cherry-red boxer-briefs that Richie is desperate to get soaked with his spit. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Richie notices that there’s already a wet spot forming at the front of them, Eddie’s dick tucked up all nice like the glorious gift it is, drool actually leaks out of the corner of his mouth. He slurps, drags the back of his hand over his lips.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re so fucking gross,” Eddie whines, but he’s grinning like he’s pleased, and he fucking should be, laying back against Richie’s pillows in just his undies, hair a messy halo around his head, looking like an angel, a dream, “Get your clothes off, fucker, it isn’t fair that you’re the only one that gets to gawk.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It would be a lie if Richie said he liked his body. He’s soft in a lot of places, hairy in a way that has had several stylists over the years want to wax his chest, his stomach, his lower back, and he’s got crooked teeth and a squinty eye from his astigmatism and thinning hair and shitty fashion sense that hasn’t matured or changed since he was thirteen and generally the vision of a particularly blind bat. But, in spite of all that, the way Eddie looks at him has him a little convinced, if not convinced entirely, that maybe he’s desirable, too, even if it’s just to Eddie and twenty-somethings on Twitter that swoon over his </span>
  <em>
    <span>dad bod</span>
  </em>
  <span> or his big arms or whatever.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, he undresses quickly, throws his clothes in the vague direction of his hamper and settles between Eddie’s now-spread legs in just a pair of boxers with fucking koi fish on them. If he would have known this was where the night was headed, maybe he would have opted for one of his tamer pairs, but, then again, maybe the little giggle the fish get from Eddie is worth the flash of embarrassment he feels when Eddie forgoes looking at </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> to look at the little orange bastards instead.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie beckons him forward, makes adorable grabby-hands at him, and he slides up until they can kiss again, Eddie’s fingers winding into his hair and tugging just a little, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>whoops</span>
  </em>
  <span>, secret’s out, he’s got a little bit of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing </span>
  </em>
  <span>for having his hair pulled, and Eddie stumbled upon the spot to grip if he wants Richie to let out a whimpery moan into his mouth. He has a feeling that will be used against him; what a thrill.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Eddie releases him, a blissed out look in his eyes and a flush spreading down from his temples to the flat muscles of his chest, Richie scoots back down. He slides his hands up and down Eddie’s thighs a couple times, ruffling the soft, sparse hairs there, and when he finally works up the courage to cup Eddie through the fabric of his underwear, Eddie lets out this </span>
  <em>
    <span>noise</span>
  </em>
  <span>, a whiny hiss as his head falls back into the pillows, and Richie suddenly feels a lot better about how worked up </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> is. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If you wanna get your mouth on it, you need to work a little faster,” Eddie grunts out, which makes Richie gasp because holy shit, Eddie’s offering him some class-a Kaspbrak dirty talk, as Richie strokes him over the soft material—he needs to find out if Eddie splurges on the micromodal stuff like he thinks—and tries to savor it, “and get your own dick out, asshole, I wanna </span>
  <em>
    <span>look </span>
  </em>
  <span>if I can’t reach to </span>
  <em>
    <span>touch</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie moans at that, pauses with his thumbs hooking into the waistband of Eddie's boxer-briefs to trace his eyes up Eddie's torso until their gazes lock. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"You can touch," Richie says, soft, even though that isn't what Eddie said, isn't what Eddie meant, because he doesn't know what else to say, but Eddie lets out a pleased sound in response, pushing up so that he's sitting again and can tug down Richie's boxers as Richie slides down his briefs. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Fuck, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Richie</span>
  </em>
  <span>," Eddie says, sounding almost angry as he wraps his nimble fingers around Richie's dick and gives it a tug, wrist flicking with practiced precision, "This thing’s a fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>monster</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Rich." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie would maybe try to be coy about it, but he isn't willing to tear his attention away from the little quiver get gives in response to his thumb rubbing just under the head of Eddie’s dick, just as perfect and curved and velvety as he expected it to be, dreamt it would be. He knows he's big, has been told by one-night-stands who were never as sharp-tongue as he craved, by a Google search and a ruler, by the unopened box of Magnums he keeps in his bedside drawer even though he hasn't gotten laid since months before his return to Derry, and there's no point in arguing or preening or whatever because Eddie can </span>
  <em>
    <span>see </span>
  </em>
  <span>it and Eddie is feeling it up and Eddie's own dick is so hard Richie can feel the pulse of it against his palm, so, like, bigger fish to fry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Hmmm," Richie nods, lifting his chin to shoot Eddie a grin and a waggle of his eyebrows, and then he's got his mouth stuffed full of cock, so he can't say much else. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>!" Eddie nearly screams, hip pushing up as Richie's tongue swirls around his tip, Richie's head bobbing down to take in more. Eddie gives up on jerking Richie off, which is fine, actually, because he's slamming himself back down on the bed and twisting to grip the headboard like he can't help it, and that's maybe the hottest thing Richie's ever been a part of. "God, Richie, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jesus</span>
  </em>
  <span>!" </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie pulls up with a wet pop, string of spit connecting his lips to the head, and he smacks weakly at Eddie's hip, says, "Just Richie, the other guys are asleep by now." before he sinks back down. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Really, Richie's out of practice, he'd be the first to admit it, and even though Eddie was stunned by what he saw once he got into Richie's stupid fish boxers, he's packing heat, too. So, Richie moves slowly, slower than he would—</span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span>—with a touch of reacclimation to the fine hobby of choking on dicks, specifically Eddie's, and Eddie is so pleasantly gone, horny to the point of making sweet little noises every few seconds and curling his toes into the sheet, that Richie has a feeling he's not all that bothered by a lack of technique. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie reaches for Richie with his free hand, the one he isn’t currently using to, from what Richie can gather, try to rip his shitty IKEA headboard apart piece by piece, and his fingers sink into Richie’s messy hair, blunt nails scritching against Richie’s scalp as he grips, twists, tugs until Richie is sobbing out a broken moan around the dick nudging the back of his throat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Hng-uh</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Richie almost gags—okay, maybe he gags just a little, but that doesn’t mean he’s gonna stop—and wraps one hand over Eddie’s sharp hip bone as the other starts stripping his own cock, jerking hard and fast with only the wetness of his own precome, drooling out from the slit every single time Eddie moves, makes a sound, does fucking anything, to ease the slide.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“God, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, fuck you, fuck your big mouth and your big dick, f-fuck,” Eddie hisses, and he thrashes and writhes when Richie finally manages to swallow around the tip of his cock, “O-oh, shit, </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It isn’t a surprise, really, that Eddie’s so goddamn loud in bed, but that doesn’t make it any less </span>
  <em>
    <span>good </span>
  </em>
  <span>that he is. He’s practically growling now, the sound getting louder each time Richie pulls up enough to bob back down again, swallowing, tasting Eddie’s precome, feeling it mix with his spit as it runs out the corners of his mouth and down his chin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie, too, is making noise, especially when he manages to touch the dark hairs at the base of Eddie’s cock, the tight curls scratchy against the tip of his nose, and he thinks, in the fuzzy part of his brain that’s still kind of functioning, that he’s going to come.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luckily, Eddie’s also close—Richie could have guessed, considering Eddie’s yanking so hard on his hair he’s a little afraid it might start ripping out in clumps—and says as much, pelvis stuttering, groin muscles flexing under Richie’s fingers over his hip.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I-I’m gonna… Oh, Rich, I,” Eddie gasps, breaking off into a reedy whine that shoots a line of fire through Richie’s stomach and down to his dick, and when Eddie tries to pull him away, Richie just doubles down and hollows his cheeks, “I-I think I’m g-gonna, </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>, fuck, fuck, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuckfuckfuckRichie</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie lets out a wail as he comes down Richie’s throat, gulpy sobs escaping with each twitch and pathetic aftershock pulse, and Richie sucks all of it down eagerly, with more finesse than he thought he’d have, really, and doesn’t pull away until Eddie’s little noises turn from ones of pleasure to ones of overstimulation.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, fuck, Richie,” Eddie whines, dropping the hand on the headboard so he can drape his wrist across his eyes, “Jesus Christ, I… What do you…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie just kind of grunts, panting as his tongue drags a circle around his lips to collect anything that might have escaped, hips rocking into his fist, and, after a moment too long, he finds his voice, creaky and abused, to say, “I-I got it, Eds… don’t worry, baby.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie keens again, and when Richie looks up at him, sweat plastering his curls to his forehead and wetting the lenses of his glasses, Eddie is peeking at him with one bleary eye cracked open, looking debauched, wrecked, undone, and if that isn’t enough to send Richie over the edge—it is, too—then Eddie mumbling a petulant, “G-good, I don’t think I can take that up my ass tonight.” does the trick quite nicely.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Eddie!” Richie hollers, voice reaching an octave he previously didn’t know it could hit—his manager will be thrilled, maybe they’ll put him in the next Chipmunks flick—as he comes all over his own hand and stomach, curling in on himself, mouth dropped open and tongue lolling out as he pants while the last desperate drops are wrung from him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The next couple of minutes kind of blur together in the best way, Richie’s ears buzzing as he collapses next to Eddie to bask. Tissues are shoved into his hands, Eddie’s voice floaty and far away as it tells him to </span>
  <em>
    <span>wipe off, you’re a fucking slob</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he obliges because, hey, he’s a gentleman. When the tissues are wadded up and thrown into the trash can—well, beside the trash can, but who cares?—Eddie finally snuggles up to him, rests his head on Richie’s chest and slides an arm over Richie’s stomach, and that would normally make him tense a little, someone feeling the </span>
  <em>
    <span>squish </span>
  </em>
  <span>of him, but it’s really nice, actually.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I can’t believe your dick is that big,” Eddie grumbles into Richie’s sweat-slick pec, craning his neck so he can look up into Richie’s eyes, “It’s ridiculous.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Mmm, I’ve been telling you I’m working with a massive hog for years, Eduardo, it isn’t my fault you don’t listen to me,” Richie giggles, winding his arm around Eddie’s shoulders to pull him even closer, pull him back into the position that started all this in the first place, and Eddie kindly doesn’t accuse Richie of </span>
  <em>
    <span>lying </span>
  </em>
  <span>back then, even though they both know he absolutely was.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They lie there in silence for a couple of minutes, the only sounds in the room coming from their breathing working back down to a normal rate, and Richie wonders if they’re going to talk about everything now or maybe wait until morning since it’s pretty late—not for them, but late, still—when he hears the distinct sound of Eddie’s stomach rumbling. He turns to grin down at Eddie, smarmy and delighted, and accepts the swat on the hip a blushing Eddie gives him in return.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Okay, so I worked up an appetite, what about it?” Eddie demands, but he doesn’t move away from where he’s still draped against Richie’s side, “It’s snack time, and, anyway, I’m not gonna be able to go again without something in my stomach. I thought I would be able to from watching you, but my refractory period isn’t what it once was, dude, I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>forty</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Richie, yet again, is struck dumb as he gapes at Eddie, his spent dick twitching with interest where it lays, completely soft now, against his thigh at the mere thoughts of </span>
  <em>
    <span>going again</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Eddie was watching you</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>going again?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eddie smirks back, proud of himself, and leans to press a bruising kiss to Richie’s lips even though he fucking knows where Richie’s lips have been, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sweet Christ above</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and then he’s rolling out of bed and making his way to the door, still naked.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Last one to the kitchen makes the sandwiches,” Eddie sing-songs, one hand on the doorknob, and then he’s racing out of the door, down the hall.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Richie swings himself up on wobbly knees and gives chase—no matter where Eddie’s running, he’ll always give chase—screaming “You’re a fucking menace, you little gremlin! Get back here!” as he thunders down the stairs and into the dark kitchen to find a smiley Eddie holding a plastic baggie of turkey lunch meat that he throws directly at Richie’s face before he giggles and bounds into the living room.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ll take extra mustard, thanks!”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING! THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS I'VE EVER WRITTEN AND MY RICHIECORE LIFESTYLE HAS NOW BEEN CEMENTED FOREVER.</p><p>Seriously though, much love to you all and I hope you enjoyed &lt;3 feel free to yell at me down below</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>here's a short playlist I made with (I think?) all the songs directly mentioned, just in case anyone wants to give them a listen! it covers the entirety of the fic, so, keep that in mind it you find yourself not seeing a song for a couple chapters!:<br/>https://open.spotify.com/playlist/30rNTWrLyPhttX87pnP8DG?si=2eok-STVS7OQfMZurHxSRg</p><p>as always, scream with me in the comments OR visit me in my newly-created Twitter hellscape @ratboyrich</p></blockquote></div></div>
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